Stars, drunk with dread, roll'd giddy from the heaven, And staggering worlds like wrecks in storms were driven; The pallid moon hung fluttering on the sight, As startled bird whose wings are stretch'd for flight; And o'er the East a fearful light begun To show the sun rise-not the morning sun, But one in wild confusion, doom'd to rise And drop again in horror from the skies. To heaven's midway it reel'd, and changed to blood, Then dropp'd, and light rushed after like a flood, The heaven's blue curtains rent and shrank away, And heaven itself seem'd threaten'd with decay; While hopeless distance, with a boundless stretch, Flash'd on Despair the joy it could not reach, A moment's mockery-ere the last dim light Vanish'd, and left an everlasting Night; And with that light Hope fled and shriek'd farewell, And Hell in yawning echoes mock'd that yell. Now Night resumed her uncreated vest, And Chaos came again, but not its rest; The melting glooms that spread perpetual stains, Kept whirling on in endless hurricanes; And tearing noises, like a troubled sea, Broke up that silence which no more would be. The reeling earth sank loosen'd from its stay, And Nature's wrecks all felt their last decay. The yielding, burning soil, that fled my feet, I seem'd to feel and struggled to retreat; And 'midst the dread of horror's mad extreme I lost all notion that it was a dream: Sinking I fell through depths that seem'd to be As far from fathom as Eternity; While dismal faces on the darkness came With wings of dragons and with fangs of flame, Writhing in agonies of wild despairs, And giving tidings of a doom like theirs. I felt all terrors of the damn'd, and fell With conscious horror that my doom was hell: And Memory mock'd me, like a haunting ghost, With light and life and pleasures that were lost; As dreams turn night to day, and day to night, So Memory flash'd her shadows of that light That once bade morning suns in glory rise, To bless green fields and trees, and purple skies, And waken'd life its pleasures to behold;-- That light flash'd on me like a story told; And days mis-spent with friends and fellow-men, And sins committed,-all were with me then. The boundless hell, whose demons never tire, Glimmer'd beneath me like a world on fire: That soul of fire, like to its souls entomb'd, Consuming on, and ne'er to be consum'd, Seem'd nigh at hand, where oft the sulphury damps O'er-aw'd its light, as glimmer dying lamps, Spreading a horrid gloom from side to side, A twilight scene of terrors half descried. Sad boil'd the billows of that burning sea, And Fate's sad yellings dismal seem'd to be; Blue roll'd its waves with horrors uncontrolled, And its live wrecks of souls dash'd howlings as they roll'd.