22. My brain began to fail when the fourth morn Burst o'er the golden isles--a fearful sleep, Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep _1300 With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep,-- A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness-- These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep Their watch in some dim charnel's loneliness, A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless! _1305 23. The forms which peopled this terrific trance I well remember--like a choir of devils, Around me they involved a giddy dance; Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, _1310 Foul, ceaseless shadows:--thought could not divide The actual world from these entangling evils, Which so bemocked themselves, that I descried All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied. 24. The sense of day and night, of false and true, _1315 Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst That darkness--one, as since that hour I knew, Was not a phantom of the realms accursed, Where then my spirit dwelt--but of the first I know not yet, was it a dream or no. _1320 But both, though not distincter, were immersed In hues which, when through memory's waste they flow, Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now. 25. Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven Who brought me thither four stiff corpses bare, _1325 And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven Hung them on high by the entangled hair; Swarthy were three--the fourth was very fair; As they retired, the golden moon upsprung, And eagerly, out in the giddy air, _1330 Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung. 26. A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, The dwelling of the many-coloured worm, Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew _1335 To my dry lips--what radiance did inform Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form? Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm Within my teeth!--a whirlwind keen as frost _1340 Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed. 27. Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane Arose, and bore me in its dark career Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane On the verge of formless space--it languished there, _1345 And dying, left a silence lone and drear, More horrible than famine:--in the deep The shape of an old man did then appear, Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. _1350