Kenn Nesbitt: I think my dad is Dracula

I think my dad is Dracula.
I know that sounds insane,
but listen for a moment and
allow me to explain.

We don't live in a castle,
and we never sleep in caves.
But, still, there's something weird
about the way my dad behaves.

I never see him go out
in the daytime when it's light.
He sleeps all day till evening,
then he leaves the house at night.

He comes home in the morning
saying, "Man, I'm really dead!"
He kisses us goodnight, and then
by sunrise he's in bed.

My mom heard my suspicion
and she said, "You're not too swift.
Your father's not a vampire.
He just works the graveyard shift."

Madison Julius Cawein: The Vampire

A lily in a twilight place?
A moonflow'r in the lonely night?—
Strange beauty of a woman's face
   Of wildflow'r-white!

The rain that hangs a star's green ray
Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness,
Is not so glimmering green and gray
   As was her dress.

I drew her dark hair from her eyes,
And in their deeps beheld a while
Such shadowy moonlight as the skies
   Of Hell may smile.

She held her mouth up redly wan,
And burning cold,—I bent and kissed
Such rosy snow as some wild dawn
   Makes of a mist.

God shall not take from me that hour,
When round my neck her white arms clung!
When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower,
   Her white throat swung!

Or words she murmured while she leaned!
Witch-words, she holds me softly by,—
The spell that binds me to a fiend
   Until I die.

Conrad Aiken: The Vampire

She rose among us where we lay.
She wept, we put our work away.
She chilled our laughter, stilled our play;
And spread a silence there.
And darkness shot across the sky,
And once, and twice, we heard her cry;
And saw her lift white hands on high
And toss her troubled hair.

What shape was this who came to us,
With basilisk eyes so ominous,
With mouth so sweet, so poisonous,
And tortured hands so pale?
We saw her wavering to and fro,
Through dark and wind we saw her go;
Yet what her name was did not know;
And felt our spirits fail.

We tried to turn away; but still
Above we heard her sorrow thrill;
And those that slept, they dreamed of ill
And dreadful things:
Of skies grown red with rending flames
And shuddering hills that cracked their frames;
Of twilights foul with wings;

James Joyce: A vampire poem

On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth

Jane Shore: Mirror

You can’t step twice into the same mirror,
said Heraclitus, of the river’s mirror.

A vessel holding water was the first mirror.
A mirror held to nostrils, life’s last mirror.

“Who is fairest?” the queen asked her mirror.
A vampire has no reflection in a mirror.

Those backward letters without a mirror
spell AMBULANCE in your rear-view mirror.

After Mom died, I covered all the mirrors
with cloth, sat seven days without mirrors.

Staring at myself staring in my mirror,
“I” became the “other” in the mirror.

Watching themselves making love in the mirror,
they were aroused by the couple in the mirror.

The amputee stood at an angle that mirrored
his phantom limb, now visible, mirrored.

In the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait’s mirror,
its painter is a figure in that convex mirror.


A palindrome is another kind of mirror
like the couplets in a ghazal’s mirror.

Her beloved’s eyes were her only mirror.
Seven bad years when he broke a mirror. 

I avoid, when I can, cruel three-way mirrors.
“Mute surfaces,” Borges called mirrors.  

As Vanity combs her long hair in the mirror,
an old bald skull awaits in the mirror. 

Standing between two facing mirrors,
I shrank down a long hallway of mirrors. 

Which Jane are you? I asked my mirror.
My mirror answered, Ask another mirror.

Edgar Allan Poe: Alone (Tribute to Allan Poe)

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were - I have not seen
As others saw - I could not bring
My passions from a common spring -
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow - I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone -
And all I lov'd - _I_ lov'd alone -
_Then_ - in my childhood - in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still -
From the torrent, or the fountain -
From the red cliff of the mountain -
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold -
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by -
From the thunder, and the storm -
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view -

William Butler Yeats: Oil And Blood

Oil And Blood

IN tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

Sylvia Plath: Daddy

   

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Efren Rebolledo: The Vampire

Whirling your deep and gloomy tresses pour
over your candid body like a torrent,
and on thr shadowy and curling flood
I strew the fiery roses of my kisses.

As I disenmesh the tangled locks
I feel the light chill chafing of your hand,
and a great shudder courses over me
and penetrates me to the very bone.

Your chaotic and disdainful eyes
glitter like stars when they hear the sigh
that from my vitals issue rendingly,

and you, thirsting, as I agonize,
assume the form of an implacable
black vampire battening on my burning blood.

Leopoldo Maria Panero: The Vampire’s Lament

You, all of you, all
That meat that in the street
Piles up, are
My nourishment,
All those eyes
Covered in sleep, I feed off the ones who never
Wake up, I feed,
Watching without seeing, or maybe it’s just a thirst
For the stupid sanction from someone else’s gaze.
All of you
Are my nourishment, and the deep
Terror of having these glass
Eyes as my only mirror, that fog
Where the dead meet, that
Is the price I pay for my nourishment.

Clark Ashton Smith: Ludar's Litany to Thasaidon

Black Lord of bale and fear, master of all confusion!
By thee, thy prophet saith,
New power is given to wizards after death,
And witches in corruption draw forbidden breath
And weave such wild enchantment and illusion
As none but lamiae may use;
And through thy grace the charneled corpses lose
Their horror, and nefandous loves are lighted
In noisome vaults long nighted;
And vampires make their sacrifice to thee —
Disgorging blood as if great urns had poured
Their bright vermilion hoard
About the washed and weltering sarcophagi.

Charles Baudelaire: Metamorphosis of a Vampire

Meanwhile, from her red mouth the woman, in husky tones,
Twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stones
And straining her white breasts from their imprisonment,
Let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:
"My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the way
To keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.
All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can make
Old men laugh happily as children for my sake.
For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I
Replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!
Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilled
That when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield
My breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring-both
Shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath-
Upon his bed that groans and sighs luxuriously
Even the impotent angels would be damned for me!"

When she drained me of my very marrow, and cold
And weak, I turned to give her one more kiss-behold,
There at my side was nothing but a hideous
Putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.
I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:
Who seemed to have replenished her arteries from my own,
The wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton
Wagged up and down in a new posture where she had lain;
Rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane
Or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right
Mournfully in the wind upon a winter's night.

William Morris: The Tune of Seven Towers

 No one goes there now: Seven Towers
    For what is left to fetch away
 From the desolate battlements all arow,
    And the lead roof heavy and grey?
 "Therefore," said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

 No one walks there now;
    Except in the white moonlight
 The white ghosts walk in a row;
    If one could see it, an awful sight,
 "Listen!" said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

 But none can see them now,
    Though they sit by the side of the moat,
 Feet half in the water, there in a row,
    Long hair in the wind afloat.
 "Therefore," said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

 If any will go to it now,
    He must go to it all alone,
 Its gates will not open to any row
    Of glittering spears - will you go alone?
 "Listen!" said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

 By my love go there now,
    To fetch me my coif away,
 My coif and my kirtle, with pearls arow,
    Oliver, go today!
 "Therefore," said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

 I am unhappy now,
    I cannot tell you why;
 If you go, the priests and I in a row
    Will pray that you may not die.
 "Listen!" said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

 If you will go for me now,
    I will kiss your mouth at last;
              [She sayeth inwardly]
 (The graves stand grey in a row.)
    Oliver, hold me fast!
 "Therefore," said fair Yoland of the flowers,
 "This is the tune of Seven Towers."

Delmira Agustini: Mouth to mouth

Cup of life where I love and dream
Of drinking death with somber satisfaction,
Furrow of fire where fantasy creates
Bold seeds of melancholy.

O mouth, you kiss from a distance, and beckon
In silence, a tablet of madness
The color of thirst and humid with flames …
Your teeth are a gate to the abyss!

Sex of a sad soul of glory
You anoint pleasure with pain; your kiss,
A dagger of fire in a sheath of ecstasy,
It devours me in dreams like a pink cancer …

A jewel of blood and moonlight; a vase filled
With roses of silence and harmony,
Nectary of his honey and his poison,
A vampire turned butterfly by daylight.

Ardent knife of glacial lilies,
Honeycomb of kisses, a living amphora
Where berries of dawn in the wine of dusk
Offer deliria and delight …

A case of flaming velvets
In which his voice is shining prey,
Wings of the word threatening flight
Chalice where the heart blazes.

H. P. Lovecraft: 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.

John Stagg: The Vampire

"Why looks my lord so deadly pale?
Why fades the crimson from his cheek?
What can my dearest husband ail
Thy heartfelt cares, O Herman, speak!

"Why, at the silent hour of rest,
Dost thou in sleep so sadly mourn?
Has tho' with heaviest grief oppress'd,
Griefs too distressful to be borne.

"Why heaves thy breast?--why throbs thy heart?
O speak! and if there be relief,
Thy Gertrude solace shall impart,
If not, at least shall share thy grief.

"Wan is that cheek, which once the bloom
Of manly beauty sparkling shew'
Dim are those eyes, in pensive gloom,
That late with keenest lustre glow'd.

"Say why, too, at the midnight hour,
You sadly pant and tug for breath,
As if some supernat'ral pow'r
Were pulling you away to death?
"Restless, tho' sleeping, still you groan,
And with convulsive horror start;
O Herman! to thy wife make known
That grief which preys upon thy heart."

"O Gertrude! how shall I relate
Th' uncommon anguish that I feel;
Strange as severe is this my fate,--
A fate I cannot long conceal.

"In spite of all my wonted strength,
Stern destiny has seal'd my doom;
The dreadful malady at length
Wil drag me to the silent tomb!"

"But say, my Herman, what's the cause
Of this distress, and all thy care.
That, vulture-like, thy vitals gnaws,
And galls thy bosom with despair?

"Sure this can be no common grief,
Sure this can be no common pain?
Speak, if this world contain relief,
That soon thy Gertrude shall obtain."

"O Gertrude, 'tis a horrid cause,
O Gertrude, 'tis unusual care,
That, vulture-like, my vitals gnaws,
And galls my bosom with despair.

"Young Sigismund, my once dear friend,
But lately he resign'd his breath;
With others I did him attend
Unto the silent house of death.

"For him I wept, for him I mourn'd,
Paid all to friendship that was due;
But sadly friendship is return'd,
Thy Herman he must follow too!

"Must follow to the gloomy grave,
In spite of human art or skill;
No pow'r on earth my life can save,
'Tis fate's unalterable will!

"Young Sigismund, my once dear friend,
But now my persecutor foul,
Doth his malevolence extend
E'en to the torture of my soul.

"By night, when, wrapt in soundest sleep,
All mortals share a soft repose,
My soul doth dreadful vigils keep,
More keen than which hell scarely knows.

"From the drear mansion of the tomb,
From the low regions of the dead,
The ghost of Sigismund doth roam,
And dreadful haunts me in my bed!

"There, vested in infernal guise,
(By means to me not understood,)
Close to my side the goblin lies,
And drinks away my vital blood!

"Sucks from my veins the streaming life,
And drains the fountain of my heart!
O Gertrude, Gertrude! dearest wife!
Unutterable is my smart.

"When surfeited, the goblin dire,
With banqueting by suckled gore,
Will to his sepulchre retire,
Till night invites him forth once more.

"Then will he dreadfully return,
And from my veins life's juices drain;
Whilst, slumb'ring, I with anguish mourn,
And toss with agonizing pain!

"Already I'm exhausted, spent;
His carnival is nearly o'er,
My soul with agony is rent,
To-morrow I shall be no more!

"But, O my Gertrude! dearest wife!
The keenest pangs hath last remain'd--
When dead, I too shall seek thy life,
Thy blood by Herman shall be drain'd!

"But to avoid this horrid fate,
Soon as I'm dead and laid in earth,
Drive thro' my corpse a jav'lin straight;--
This shall prevent my coming forth.

"O watch with me, this last sad night,
Watch in your chamber here alone,
But carefully conceal the light
Until you hear my parting groan.

"Then at what time the vesper-bell
Of yonder convent shall be toll'd,
That peal shall ring my passing knell,
And Herman's body shall be cold!

"Then, and just then, thy lamp make bare,
The starting ray, the bursting light,
Shall from my side the goblin scare,
And shew him visible to sight!"

The live-long night poor Gertrude sate,
Watch'd by her sleeping, dying lord;
The live-long night she mourn'd his fate,
The object whom her soul ador'd.

Then at what time the vesper-bell
Of yonder convent sadly toll'd,
The, then was peal'd his passing knell,
The hapless Herman he was cold!

Just at that moment Gertrude drew
From 'neath her cloak the hidden light;
When, dreadful! she beheld in view
The shade of Sigismund!--sad sight!

Indignant roll'd his ireful eyes,
That gleam'd with wild horrific stare;
And fix'd a moment with surprise,
Beheld aghast th' enlight'ning glare.

His jaws cadaverous were besmear'd
With clott'd carnage o'er and o'er,
And all his horrid whole appear'd
Distent, and fill'd with human gore!

With hideous scowl the spectre fled;
She shriek'd aloud;--then swoon'd away!
The hapless Herman in his bed,
All pale, a lifeless body lay!

Next day in council 'twas decree,
(Urg'd at the instance of the state,)
That shudd'ring nature should be freed
From pests like these ere 'twas too late.

The choir then burst the fun'ral dome
Where Sigismund was lately laid,
And found him, tho' within the tomb,
Still warm as life, and undecay'd.

With blood his visage was distain'd,
Ensanguin'd were his frightful eyes,
Each sign of former life remain'd,
Save that all motionless he lies.

The corpse of Herman they contrive
To the same sepulchre to take,
And thro' both carcases they drive,
Deep in the earth, a sharpen'd stake!

By this was finish'd their career,
Thro' this no longer they can roam;
From them their friends have nought to fear,
Both quiet keep the slumb'ring tomb.

Bram Stoker: The one thing needful

The one thing needful

In Martha's house the weary Master lay,
Spent with His faring through the burning day.
The busy hostess bustled through the room
On household cares intent, and at His feet
The gentle Mary took her wonted seat.
Soft came His words in music through the gloom.

Cumbered about much serving Martha wrought
Her sister listening as the Master taught
Till something fretful an appeal she made:
 " Doth it not matter that on me doth fall
The burden ; Mary helpeth not at all ?
 Master, command her that she give me aid."

 "Ah, Martha, Martha! thou art full of care,
And many things thy needless trouble share."
Thus with the love that chides the Master spake:
" One thing alone is needful. That good part
Hath Mary chosen from her loving heart ;
And that part from her shall I never take."

One thing alone we lack. Our souls, indeed,
Have fiercer hunger than the body's need.
Ah, happy they that look in loving eyes.
The harsh world round them fades. The Master's Voice
In sweetest music bids their souls rejoice
And wakes an echo there that never dies.  

James Maxwell: The Vampyre

Thair is a knichte rydis through the wood,
And a doughty knichte is hee.
And sure hee is on a message sent,
He rydis sae hastily.
Hee passit the aik, and he passit the birk,
And he passit many a tre,
Bot pleasant to him was the saugh sae slim,
For beneath it hee sis see
The boniest ladye that ever hee saw,
Scho was sae schyn and fair.
And their scho sat, beneath the saugh,
Kaiming hir gowden hair.
And then the knichte – “Oh ladye brichte,
What chance has brought you here?
But saw the word, and ye schall gang
Back to your kndred dear.”
Then up and spok the ladye fair –
“I have nae friends or kin,
Bot in alittle boat I live,
Amidst the waves’ loud din.”
Then answered thus the douchty knichte—
“I’ll follow you through all,
For gin ye bee in a little boat,
The world to it seemis small.”
They goed through the wood, and through the wood,
To the end of the wood they came:
And when they came to the end of the wood
They saw the salt sea faem.
And then they saw the wee, wee boat,
That daunced on the top of the wave,
And first got in the ladye fair,
And then the knichte sae brave.
They got into the wee wee boat,
And rowed wi’ a’ their micht;
When the knichte dae brave, he turnit about,
And lookit at the ladye bricht:
He lookit at her bonnie cheik,
And hee lookit at hir twa bricht eyne,
Bot hir rosie cheik growe ghaistly pale,
And shoe seymit as scho deid had been.
The fause, fause, knichte growe pale wi’ frichte.
And his hair rose up on end,
For gane-by days cam to his mynde,
And his former luve he kenned,
Then spake the layde – “Thou fause knichte,
Hast done to me much ill,
Thou didst forsake me long ago,
Bot I am constant still;
For though I ligg in the woods sae cald,
At rest I canna bee
Until I sucks the gude lyfe blude
Of the man that gart me dee.”
Hee saw hir lipps were wet we’ blude,
And hee saw hir lufelesse eyne,
And loud hee cry’d, “Get frae my side,
Thou vampyr corps encleane!”
Bot no, hee is in hir magic boat,
And on the wyde, wyde sea;
And the vampyr suckis his gude lyfe blude,
Sho suckis hym till hee dee.
So now beware, whoe’er you are,
That walkis in this lone wood:
Beware of that deceitful spright,
That ghaist that suckis the blude.

John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci

John Keats by William Hilton

O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

0 what can ail thee, knight at arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a 1ily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long. her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said--
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd--Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried--"La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Sleeper

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps! - and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right -
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop -
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully - so fearfully -
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold -
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals -
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone -
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.