Thro' 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 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 luster or name.

I have drifted o'er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies,
Where the many-fork'd lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible demons, 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 a 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 frog-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 writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.

I have peer'd from the casement 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 that 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-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.