THE DREAM OF DREAD.

I have lain for an hour or twain

Awake, and the tempest is beating

On the roof, and the sleet on the pane,

And the winds are three enemies meeting;

And I listen and hear it again,

My name, in the silence, repeating.

Then dumbness of death that must slay,

Till the midnight is burst like a bubble;

And out of the darkness a ray —

‘ T is she! the all beautiful double;

With a face like the breaking of day,

Eyes dark with the magic of trouble.

I move not; she lies with her lips

At mine; and I feel she is drawing

My life from my heart to their tips,

My heart where the horror is gnawing;

My life in a thousand slow sips,

My flesh with her sorcery awing.

She binds me with merciless eyes;

She drinks of my blood, and I hear it

Drain up with a shudder and rise

To the lips, like the serpent's, that steer it

And she lies and she laughs as she lies,

Saying, “Lo, thy affinitized spirit!”

Then I hear — as if torturing swords

Had shivered and torments had grated

Hoarse iron deep under; and words

As of sins that howled out and awaited

A fiend who lashed into their hords,

And a demon who lacerated.

And I shriek and lie clammy and stark,

As the curse of a devil mounts higher,

Up — out of damnation and dark,

Up — a hobble of hoofs that is dire;

I feel that his mouth is a spark,

His features, of filth and of fire.

“To thy body's corruption, thy grave!

Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!”

And a blackness rolls down like a wave

With a clamor of tongues that are swollen —

And I feel that my flesh is the slave

Of a — vampire, diakka, eidolon?