Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

     Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

I have liv’d 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 whirl’d 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-fork’d lightning is rending,

     That resound with hysterical cries;

With the moans of invisible daemons,

             that out of the green waters rise.

I have plung’d like a deer through the arches

     Of the hoary primordial 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 thro’ 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 scan’d 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 peer’d from the casements in wonder

     At the mouldering meadows around,

At the many-roof’d 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-deck’d 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.

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,

     Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,

I have liv’d 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.