g gossamer--
The mazy motes that rise and fall in air--
Had been as signs of life; when, suddenly,
As bursts the thunder-peal upon the calm,
Whence I had come the clank of feet was heard--
A noise remote, which near'd and near'd, and near'd--
Even to the threshold of that room it came,
Where, with raised hands, spell-bound, I listening stood;
And the door opening stealthily, I beheld
The embodied figure of the phantom head,
Garb'd in the quaint robes of the portraiture--
A veritable fiend, a life in death!

VIII.

My heart stood still, though quickly came my breath;
Headlong I rush'd away, I knew not where;
In frenzied hast rushing I ran; my feet
With terror wing'd, a hell-hound at my heels,
Yea! scarce three strides between us. Through a door
Right opposite I flew, slamming its weight,
To shut me from the spectre who pursued:
And lo! another room, the counterpart
Of that just left, but gloomier. On I rush'd,
Beholding o'er its hearth the grinning face,
Another and the same; the haunting face
Reflected, as it seem'd, from wall to wall!
There, opening as I shut, onward he came,
That Broucoloka, not to be escaped,
With measured tread unwearied, like the wolf's
When tracking its sure prey: forward I sprang,
And lo! another room--another face,
Alike, but gloomier still; another door,
And the pursuing fiend--and on--and on,
With palpitating heart and yielding knees,
From room to room, each mirror'd in the last.
At length I reach'd a porch--amid my hair
I felt his desperate clutch--outward I flung--
The open air was gain'd--I stood alone!

IX.

That welcome postern open'd on a court--
Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt
Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd,
Each on its hoary tablature, half hid
With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank,
The sculptured leer of that hyena face,
Softening as backwards, through the waves of time,
Receded generations more remote.
It was a square of tombs--of old, grey tombs,
(The oldest of an immemorial date,)
Deserted quite--and rusty gratings black,
Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults--
And epitaphs unread--and mouldering bones.
Alone, forlorn, the only breathing thing
In that unknown, forgotten cemetery,
Reeling, I strove to stand, a