Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone Where Death sits, listening to the wind and rain; And dark the house, where I shall meet again That long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown: For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone, And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain; And windows glaring with a blood-red stain, And hollow eyes, that burn me to the bone, Within a face that looks as that black night It looked when deep I dug for it a grave,-- The dagger wound above the brow, the thin Blood trickling slantwise down the cheek’s dead white;-- And I have dreamed not even God can save Me and my soul from that arisen Sin.
Still shall I stand the everlasting hate Colossal Chaos builded ’neath thine eyes, The symbol of all evil, that defies Thy victory, and, vanquished, still can wait. Scar me again with such vast flame as late Hurled abrupt thunder and archangel cries, ’Mid fiery whirlwinds of the terrible skies, Down the deep’s roar against Hell’s monster gate! Thy wrath can not abolish or make less Me, an eternal wile opposed to wrath: Me, who to thwart thee evermore shall plan! Behold thy Eden’s vanished loveliness!-- Why hast thou set a sword within its path, And cursed and exiled thine own image, Man?
Long have I heard the noise of battle clash Along the windy sea that roared again; Seen helmets rise, and on the clanking plain Barbaric chieftains meet and, howling, dash Their mailéd thousands down, with crash on crash, Like crags contending with the roaring main; Torrents of shields, like rivers of rolling rain, I have beheld within the moon’s pale flash; The moon, that, like a spirit, o’er the wood Hung white as steel, glimmering the spears and swords, That shone like ripples in the iron flood, The streams of war, that beat in heathen hordes About their rock-like kings, whence wave-like far, Circled the battle, warrior on warrior.
On, towards the purlieus of impossible space, From Death, enamoured, Life, capricious, flies: Communicated sorrow of his face Freezing her ever backward burning eyes.
Man’s days are planted as a flower-bed With labor’s lily and the rose of folly: Beneath grief’s cypress, pale, uncomforted, The phantom fungus blooms of melancholy.
With starry gold Night still endorses what Man’s soul hath written, guessing at the skies: Day on Night’s scribble drops a fiery blot, And ’thwart the writing scrawls, “The lie of lies.”