Nemesis

Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, I have lived o'er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight; And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright. I have whirled with the earth at the dawning, When the sky was a vaporous flame; I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name. I had drifted o'er seas without ending, Under sinister grey-clouded skies, That the many-forked lightning is rending, That resound with hysterical cries; With the moans of invisible daemons, that out of the green waters rise. I have plunged like a deer through the arches Of the hoary primoridal grove, Where the oaks feel the presence that marches, And stalks on where no spirit dares rove, And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers through dead branches above. I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains That rise barren and bleak from the plain, I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains That ooze down to the marsh and the main; And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things, I care not to gaze on again. I have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace, I have trod its untenanted hall, Where the moon rising up from the valleys Shows the tapestried things on the wall; Strange figures discordantly woven, that I cannot endure to recall. I have peered from the casements in wonder At the mouldering meadows around, At the many-roofed village laid under The curse of a grave-girdled ground; And from rows of white urn-carven marble, I listen intently for sound. I have haunted the tombs of the ages, I have flown on the pinions of fear, Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages; Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear: And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer. I was old when the pharaohs first mounted The jewel-decked throne by the Nile; I was old in those epochs uncounted When I, and I only, was vile; And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle. Oh, great was the sin of my spirit, And great is the reach of its doom; Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it, Nor can respite be found in the tomb: Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom. Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, I have lived o'er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight; And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.