IV. Speechless; struck with stony silence; frozen to the floor I stood, Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling, blood:―― Till I felt my life-stream oozing, oozing from those lambent lips:―― Till the Demon seemed to name me; then a wondrous calm o’ercame me, And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death-damp stiff and gluey, And I fell back on my pillow in apparent soul-eclipse! V. Then, as in Death’s seeming shadow, in the icy Pall of Fear I lay stricken, came a hoarse and hideous murmur to my ear:―― Came a murmur like the murmur of assassins in their sleep:―― Muttering, “Higher! Higher! Higher! I am Demon of the Fire! I am Arch-Fiend of the Fire! and each blazing roof’s my pyre, And my sweetest incense is the blood and tears my victims weep!” VI. “How I revel on the Prairie! How I roar among the Pines! How I laugh when from the village o’er the snow the red flame shines, And I hear the shrieks of terror, with a Life in every breath! How I scream with lambent laughter as I hurl each crackling rafter Down the fell abyss of Fire, until higher! higher! higher! Leap the High Priests of my Altar in their merry Dance of Death!” VII. “I am monarch of the Fire! I am Vassal-King of Death! World-encircling, with the shadow of its Doom upon my breath! With the symbol of Hereafter flaming from my fatal face! I command the Eternal Fire! Higher! higher! higher! higher! Leap my ministering Demons, like Phantasmagoric lemans Hugging Universal Nature in their hideous embrace!” VIII. Then a sombre silence shut me in a solemn shrouded sleep, And I slumbered like an infant in the “Cradle of the Deep,” Till the Belfry in the Forest quivered with the matin stroke, And the martins, from the edges of its lichen-lidden ledges, Shimmered through the russet arches where the Light in torn files marches, Like a routed army struggling through the serried ranks of oak. IX. Through my ivy fretted casement filtered in a tremulous note From the tall and stately linden where a Robin swelled his throat:―― Querulous, quaker breasted Robin, calling quaintly for his mate! Then I started up, unbidden, from my slumber nightmare ridden, With the memory of that Dire Demon in my central Fire On my eye’s interior mirror like the Shadow of a Fate! X. Ah! the fiendish Fire had smouldered to a white and formless heap, And no knot of oak was flaming as it flamed upon my sleep; But around its very centre, where the Demon Face had shone, Forked shadows seemed to linger, pointing as with spectral finger To a BIBLE, massive, golden, on a table carved and olden―― And I bowed, and said, “All Power is of God, of God alone!”