Were his eyes open?—Yes! and his mouth too. Surprise has this effect—to make one dumb, Yet leave the gate which eloquence slips through As wide as if a long speech were to come. Nigh and more nigh the awful echoes drew, Tremendous to a mortal tympanum: His eyes were open, and (as was before Stated) his mouth. What open’d next?—the door. It open’d with a most infernal creak, Like that of hell. ‘Lasciate ogni speranza Voi che entrate!’ The hinge seem’d to speak, Dreadful as Dante’s rhima, or this stanza; Or—but all words upon such themes are weak: A single shade ’s sufficient to entrance a Hero—for what is substance to a spirit? Or how is ’t matter trembles to come near it? The door flew wide,—not swiftly, but, as fly The sea-gulls, with a steady, sober flight, And then swung back, nor close, but stood awry, Half letting in long shadows on the light, Which still in Juan’s candlesticks burned high, For he had two, both tolerably bright, And in the doorway, darkening darkness, stood The sable Friar in his solemn hood. Between two worlds life hovers like a star, ’Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge. How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge, Lash’d from the foam of ages; while the graves Of empires heave but like some passing waves. Don Juan shook, as erst he had been shaken The night before, but being sick of shaking, He first inclined to think he had been mistaken, And then to be ashamed of such mistaking. His own internal ghost began to awaken Within him and to quell his corporal quaking, Hinting that soul and body on the whole Were odds against a disembodied soul. And then his dread grew wrath, and his wrath fierce, And he arose, advanced. The shade retreated, But Juan, eager now the truth to pierce, Followed, his veins no longer cold, but heated, Resolved to thrust the mystery carte and tierce, At whatsoever risk of being defeated. The ghost stopped, menaced, then retired, until He reached the ancient wall, then stood stone still. Juan put forth one arm. Eternal powers! It touched no soul nor body, but the wall, On which the moonbeams fell in silvery showers Checkered with all the tracery of the hall. He shuddered, as no doubt the bravest cowers When he can’t tell what ’tis that doth appal. How odd, a single hobgoblin’s nonentity Should cause more fear than a whole host’s identity. But still the shade remained, the blue eyes glared, And rather variably for stony death. Yet one thing rather good the grave had spared; The ghost had a remarkably sweet breath. A straggling curl showed he had been fair-haired. A red lip with two rows of pearls beneath Gleamed forth, as through the casement’s ivy shroud The moon peeped, just escaped from a grey cloud.