Through the midnight Forest leaping――Death’s red harvest fresh from reaping―― Once this skull was steeped and drunken in a revelry of gore: In his crimson orgie shrieking, mad with lust, and murder reeking―― Thus the Blood-Avenger found him――smote him!――and he raved no more! In that forest, leaf-enfolded, many a nameless year he mouldered, Withered, shrivelled, fell to utter dry and desolate decay; Till of all his savage glory naught there was to tell the story Save this dark uncouth and dented skull I found, and bore away! With the coward thought to mock it, in each eyeball’s blackened socket Once I set a globe of silver as a dread and dismal jest. Oh! full often has the glitter of those pale orbs caused a bitter Burst of sharp and sudden terror to a timid twilight guest! But to-night their flashes daunt me, and their changing glances haunt me, And their cold glare shivers through me like a scymitar of ice! Well I know their threat is seeming――that no life is in their gleaming, Yet my soul is strangely troubled by my own accurst device! Ay! my soul is strangely troubled! and my heart-throbs fiercely doubled! And I cannot wrench my gaze from off those silver demon balls! To my brain their blaze seems burning――Ah! by Heaven! I saw them turning! Yes! see――see them! there! they roll! O God! a red light from them falls! * * * * * How its white teeth glint and glisten! Listen! Am I mad! O, listen! No! It speaks! I hear a whisper rattle through its hollow jaws! “With this jest my front adorning, Pale-Face, you are blindly scorning―― Sadly, sorrowfully scorning all your Being’s Primal Laws! “Count the dim descent of ages! Turn Life’s crisp and crumbling pages! Is a single leaf forgotten in this Golgotha of Doom? Fool! You bear a fragile carnal shroud around your ghastly charnel But to add another atom to the Inevitable Doom! “I have stripped my shroud before you: You, perchance, now wear it o’er you! Every shred of Life is worn from the Dead Past o’er and o’er! Through the years the Earth is heaving with this weird and wondrous weaving, And your slender thread but waiteth till the Loom hath need for more!” * * * * * It hath ceased! There is no glimmer on the hearth! The lamp grows dimmer, Dimmer, dimmer,――now it flickers, flashes, wildly flares―― is fled! Through the Darkness round me heaving, now I hear a sound of weaving, As a mighty loom were working, viewless, with a viewless thread! [Illustration] THE BELLS. I.