Nemesis I Monster

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 primoridal 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