There is a far-off thrill that troubles me:

a faint thin ripple of shadow, momently,

dies out across my lucid icy cell.

I am betrayed by winter to the spell

of morbid sleep, that somewhere rolls its waves

insidiously, gather’d from unblest graves,

to creep above each distant crumbled mole.

When that assault is full against my soul,

I must go down, thro’ chapels black with mould,

past ruin’d doors, whose arches, ridged with gold,

catch, in their grooves, a gloom more blackly dript,

some stairway winding hours-long towards the crypt

where panic night lies stricken ‘neath the curse

exuding from the dense enormous hearse

of some old vampire-god, whose bulk, within,

lies gross and festering in his shroud of sin.