The chasms deep and oriflammed, The spastic lights of a green room, Dim torches show the jeweled tombs Wherein are hid the studded crowns Of Eastern queens; or, when high-bred Dames pick from Death's unbroken womb The coral wreaths and poppy blooms, Two priestesses in scarlet gowns Curse loudly as the royal dead Are strewn with palmy leaves and dyes. And crimsons adders on the hulls, Search for toadstools smeared with blood. And livid lamps where vypers spoon, As some bad harlot shrieks and cries Her Nature's sins unto three skulls, A shameless gnome bathes in hell's flood The thighs he filched from a gray tomb. Drawn by the whispers from the wind, 'Mid glories of the hollowed night, To storm-swept vales and mounts we haste, And, in monastic halls we see, Above a greenish gyrus rind, The flick'ring flames of a light, Beneath whose subtle, shadowed waste Squat men and women that would flee The ghastly words from Vellum told, Who pluck their eyes and pull their hair,-- Beneath their feet there writhes a worm! As bludgeons smite a leering soul. And when a wench that Satan sold To some old seer, whose head is bare, And oily snakes in cauldrons squirm, All blast the sight and curse this shoal,-- Infernal land of Sin and Doom! Eternal moans and sighs we hear; A swarthy demon laughs with glee. Then, thickly from a ghastly hole The turbid dyes of blood doth bloom From minxes bold, crouched with giant fear, Provoke a sage who could not see, With feelings for her impeached soul.