I fear to guess why such a morbid mood
Should in my callous spirit slowly grow,
But I have felt within me madly glow
An utter greed for desolate solitude.

Phantasmal fancies, bizarre and unwooed,
Have urged me with resistless force to go
Where chill winds over cemeteries blow,
And where among dank tombs the strange birds brood.

Vague hands, invisible, have often led
My vacillating steps to such drear ways,
I know not wherefor, but in deep dismay,
Whene'er I roam amid the hosts of dead,
I feel beside me in the spectral haze
The wan, attendant skeleton of Gray.