Classic Poem

Night of storms has passed, The
The sunshine bright and clear
Gives glory to the verdant waste
And warms the breezy air;

And I would leave my bed,
Its cheering smile to see,
To chase the visions from my head
Whose forms have troubled me.

In all the hours of gloom
My soul was wrapt away;*
I dreamt I stood by a marble tomb
Where royal corpses lay.

It was just the time of eve
When parted ghosts might come
Above their prisoned dust to grieve
And wail their woeful doom.

And truly at my side
I saw a shadowy thing
Most dim, and yet its presence there
Curdled my blood with ghastly fear
And ghastlier wondering.

My breath I could not draw,
The air seemed ranny;1*
But still my eyes with maddening gaze
Were fixed upon its fearful face,
And its were fixed on me.

I fell down on the stone,
But could [not] turn away;
My words died in a voiceless moan
When I began to pray.

And still it bent above,
Its features full in view;
It seemed close by, and yet more far
Than this world from the farthest star
That tracks the boundless blue.

Indeed, 'twas not the space
Of earth or time between,
But the sea of death's eternity,*
The gulph o'er which mortality
Has never, never been.

O bring not back again
The horror of that hour
When its lips opened, and a sound
Awoke the stillness reigning round,
Faint as a dream, but the earth shrank
And heaven's lights shivered 'neath its power.1 A north of England colloquialism, meaning " sharp " or " keen. "