There is snow on the ground, And the valleys are cold, And a midnight profound Blackly squats o'er the wold; But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings un-hallowed and old. There is death in the clouds, There is fear in the night, For the dead in their shrouds Hail the sin's turning flight. And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule- altar fungous and white. To no gale of Earth's kind Sways the forest of oak, Where the sick boughs entwined By mad mistletoes choke, For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

Life! Ah, Life! What may this fluorescent pageant mean? Who can the evanescent object glean? He that is dead is the key of Life— Gone is the symbol, deep is the grave! Man is a breath, and Life is the fire; Birth is death, and silence the choir. Wrest from the aeons the heart of gold! Tear from the fabric the threads that are old! Life! Ah, Life!

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night, I have liv’d o’er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight; And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright. I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning, When the sky was a vaporous flame; I have seen the dark universe yawning, Where the black planets roll without aim; Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name. I had drifted o’er seas without ending, Under sinister grey-clouded skies That the many-fork’d lightning is rending, That resound with hysterical cries; With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise. I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches Of the hoary primordial grove, Where the oaks feel the presence that marches And stalks on where no spirit dares rove; And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above. I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains That rise barren and bleak from the plain, I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains That ooze down to the marsh and the main; And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again. I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace, I have trod its untenanted hall, Where the moon writhing up from the valleys Shews the tapestried things on the wall; Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall. I have peer’d from the casement in wonder At the mouldering meadows around, At the many-roof’d village laid under The curse of a grave-girdled ground; And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound. I have haunted the tombs of the ages, I have flown on the pinions of fear Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages, Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear: And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer. I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile; I was old in those epochs uncounted When I, and I only, was vile; And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle. Oh, great was the sin of my spirit, And great is the reach of its doom; Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it, Nor can respite be found in the tomb: Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom. Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night, I have liv’d o’er my lives without number, I have sounded all things with my sight; And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.