The Devil guards his secrets close as God. For who can say what elementaries, Demonic, lurk in desolate dells and hills And shadowy woods? malignant forces who, Malicious vassals of satanic power, Are agents to that Evil none may name, Who signs himself, through these, a slave to those, Those mortals who call in the aid of Hell, And for some earthly, transitory gift, Barter their souls and all their hopes of Heaven. Of these enchanted bullets let me speak: There may be such: our earth hath things as strange, Perhaps, and stranger, that we doubt not of, While we behold,--not only 'neath the thatch Of Ignorance's hovel,--but within The stately halls of Wisdom's palaces, How Superstition sits an honored guest. A cross-way, so they say, among the hills; A cross-way in a solitude of pines; And on the lonely cross-way you must draw A bloody circle with a bloody sword; And round the circle, runic characters, Weird and symbolic: here a skull, and there A scythe, and cross-bones, and an hour-glass here: And in the centre, fed with coffin-wood, Stolen from the grave of--say a murderer, A fitful fire. Eleven of the clock The first ball leaves the mold--the sullen lead Mixed with three bullets that have hit their mark, And blood the wounded Sacramental Host, Stolen, and hence unhallowed, oozed when shot Fixed to a riven pine. Ere midnight strike, With never a word until that hour sound, Must all the balls be cast; and these must be In number three and sixty; three of which The Fiend's dark agent, demon Sammael, Claims for his master and stamps for his own To hit aside their mark, askew for harm. The other sixty shall not miss their mark.