Caressed by crystal dews and light Beyond the realm of scale and fin, Incarian Thought flits Fancy wings To hazards where a crimson urn Makes scarlet this eternal height Of sunless suns and reigning sin,-- Flame-decked this plain of warring kings Where poisoned fumes and beacons burn! And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from splinter'd wracks and domes. Where viscid mists and vulpine cries Rise from the moat of dungeoned gloom And rasp the stationed walls of night Until sequesteréd skulls and bones Are made to hear the moaning sighs That some mad Titan, rayed in gold, Wrests from Damnation's siffling tomb. And labyrinths of Horror's Home, 'Mid vapours green and aisles unsunned, Provoke each cursing mattoid's fold Until the night is changed to noon By cowled magicians on a dome. Then wizardry, strange, unsummed, Reveals each varlet, Figgum's might: A hemless rabble from the South That some wild Trojan flayed and curs'd, Skirr thro' the Cauldron's broken lane And wing for implex strands and light. There, where tapers flare on Hell's mouth This clan damns each giant Soldan first. And Medeas in this vast plain, Who blink at yon dysodile lamps, Slap thenars and each bifurcous As javels drink from scyphus' bright. Blood-curdling monsters on a rope That sate upon the damn'd one's camps As hell-winds gleam most glorious-- Each Vandal's music day or night! Vain! vain! Each isle of hidden Hope! Alas! Alas! Each olpe of Remorse! Each vaulted soul and spiral thought, Swirl in the throes of waters cold; Where rivers with the venom crawls, Croak bat-faced incubi till hoarse. And succubi that Hecate taught, Bedecked in byss and spangled gold, Sing runes unto the dungeoned halls. Then burning ghauts and crimsoned peaks, Vomit each, green, abhorrent clouds; The Temple's drum sounds tomb and death To those that came for unsung trust, And pyres that smoulderéd for three weeks. Spit wenches' blood thro' addling crowds And filch each leering vyper's breath,-- Vile japes that dam all struck with dust! Erelong unholy fugitives roam 'Mid imbosk caves and moaning dales To piercing screes of purple gloom, Where gurgling sighs and rasping moans,-- Each bloody vampyre's home of loam As life-tides drip to scarlet vales,-- Unshadowed haunts of darkling Doom! Add terror to the rasping groans That roaring surfs of rubic blood Fling to each afrite's acrid crypt. And mildewed skulls and ashen bones That lie before each pillaréd mount, Speak tidings of a leprous flood.