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The Dream Of Dread.
By Madison Julius Cawein
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?
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