Over the rocks, through trackless woods, O’er bottomless chasms and raging floods, Through measureless wastes of dreary swamps, Lit by the fireflies’ fitful lamps, Where the moccasin coils in scaly spires ’Mong the water-lilies and tangled briars; Where the spotted toad and the water newt Lurk in the weeds of the poisonous fen, And the blue-heron utters its plaintive cry, And the owl hoots out to the starless sky, And the foul miasma’s putrid breath Is filling the air with the taint of death-- Under the Upas tree’s fatal shade Where death his carnival has made; Where ghastly corpses taint the day And the vulture fears to claim his prey; In the stifling air of the Grotto del Cane Where the night dews fall like blustering rain-- I fled, nor looked one moment back, For the ghosts were yelling on my track. Ah! not the unimprisoned shadows, Which dwell in the Elysian meadows, Released from pain, and want, and care, And doubt and sorrow and despair; Nor such as timid wanderers meet, When the moon is struggling under a cloud, With bony fingers and skeleton feet, And grinning skulls and ghastly shroud, But the nameless troop which lawless thought To the poet’s wildest dream has brought, The brood which dark remorse might view When justice comes to claim her due; Strange somethings of more frightful mien Than mortal eye has ever seen. O! sacred sleep, once more descend, And seal these throbbing, aching eyes, Thou art the sufferer’s truest friend, And bringest balm from Paradise, Distilled from groves which never cast Their leaves from worm, or winter’s blast. Hush!--’Twas as if some murmured strain, Well known in childhood’s happy hours, Came wafted o’er a desolate plain, On winds impregnated with flowers, And then they vanish--like the lambent light That flashes through a tempest cloud at night Lo! Dreamland’s terrible array, Advances still--Away, away!-- Down through the dark Cimmerian glen Stained with the blood of murdered men, Far from the beams of the friendly sun When “deeds without a name” are done, And the night-hags hold their dance of death Around the cauldron of Macbeth; Where the sire fell by the hand of the son-- A stab, a groan, and the crime was done; Where the duelist sped the ball of death, And the mother stifled the infant’s breath, Under yon gloomy cypress’ shade By the lonely grave of the beautiful maid, Murdered by him who had betrayed, Where her spectre glides at dead of night With clots of gore on her bosom white; Where on a gibbet the murderer swings Waving his fleshless arms like wings-- I fled, nor quaked at the hideous sight, For life and death were in my flight.