Excerpt
22.My brain began to fail when the fourth mornBurst o'er the golden isles—a fearful sleep,Which through the caverns dreary and forlornOf the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep _1300With whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep,—A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness—These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keepTheir watch in some dim charnel's loneliness,A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless! _1305
23.The forms which peopled this terrific tranceI well remember—like a choir of devils,Around me they involved a giddy dance;Legions seemed gathering from the misty levelsOf Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, _1310Foul, ceaseless shadows:—thought could not divideThe actual world from these entangling evils,Which so bemocked themselves, that I descriedAll shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.
24.The sense of day and night, of false and true, _1315Was dead within me. Yet two visions burstThat darkness—one, as since that hour I knew,Was not a phantom of the realms accursed,Where then my spirit dwelt—but of the firstI know not yet, was it a dream or no. _1320But both, though not distincter, were immersedIn hues which, when through memory's waste they flow,Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.
25.Methought that grate was lifted, and the sevenWho brought me thither four stiff corpses bare, _1325And from the frieze to the four winds of HeavenHung them on high by the entangled hair;Swarthy were three—the fourth was very fair;As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,And eagerly, out in the giddy air, _1330Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clungOver the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.
26.A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew _1335To my dry lips—what radiance did informThose horny eyes? whose was that withered form?Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghostLaughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warmWithin my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frost _1340Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.
27.Then seemed it that a tameless hurricaneArose, and bore me in its dark careerBeyond the sun, beyond the stars that waneOn the verge of formless space—it languished there, _1345And dying, left a silence lone and drear,More horrible than famine:—in the deepThe shape of an old man did then appear,Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleepHis heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. _1350
28.And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I sawThat column, and those corpses, and the moon,And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnawMy vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boonOf senseless death would be accorded soon;— _1355When from that stony gloom a voice arose,Solemn and sweet as when low winds attuneThe midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.
29.He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled; _1360As they were loosened by that Hermit old,Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,To answer those kind looks; he did enfoldHis giant arms around me, to upholdMy wretched frame; my scorched limbs he wound _1365In linen moist and balmy, and as coldAs dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with soundLike earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,
30.As, lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,Were billows leaping on the harbour-bar, _1370And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirredMy hair;—I looked abroad, and saw a starShining beside a sail, and distant farThat mountain and its column, the known markOf those who in the wide deep wandering are, _1375So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark....