The Nightmare Tarn

I sat beside the moonless tarn alone, In darkness where a mumbling air was blown— A moulded air, insufferably fraught With dust of plundered charnels: there was naught In this my dream but darkness and the wind, The blowing dust, the stagnant waters blind, And sombre boughs of pine or cypress old Wherefrom a rain of ashes dark and cold At 'whiles fell on me, or was driven by To feed the tongueless tarn; within the sky The stars were like a failing phosphor wan In gutted tombs from which the worms have gone. But though the dust and ashes in one cloud Blinded and stifled me as might a shroud, And though the foul putrescent waters gave Upon my face the fetors of the grave, Though all was black corruption and despair, I could not stir, like mandrake rooted there, And with mine every breath I seemed to raise The burden of some charnel of old days, Where, tier on tier, the leaden coffins lie. While sluggish black eternities went by I waited; on the darkness of my dream There fell nor lantern-flame nor lightning-gleam, Nor gleam of moon or meteor; the wind Withdrawn as in some sighing tomb, declined, And all the dust was fallen; the waters drear Lay still as blood of corpses. Loud and near The cry of one who drowned in her despair Came to me from the filthy tarn; the air Shuddered thereat, and all my heart was grown A place of fears the nether hell might own, And prey to monstrous wings and beaks malign: For, lo! the voice, O dearest love, was thine! And I—I could not stir: the dreadful weight Of tomb on ancient tomb accumulate Lay on my limbs and stifled all my breath, And when I strove to cry, the dust of death Had filled my mouth, nor any whisper came To answer thee, who called upon my name!