The night of storms has passed
The sunshine bright and clear
Gives glory to the verdant waste
And warms the breezy air

And I would leave my bed
Its cheering smile to see
To chase the visions from my head
Whose forms have troubled me

In my all the hours of gloom
My soul was rapt away
I dreamt I stood by a marble tomb
Where royal corpses lay

It was just the time of eve
When parted ghosts might come
Above their prisoned dust to grieve
And wail their woeful doom

And truly at my side
I saw a shadowy thing
Most dim and yet its presence there
Curdled my blood with ghastly fear

And ghastlier wondering
My breath I could not draw
The air seemed uncanny
But still my eyes with maddening gaze
Were fixed upon its fearful face
And its were fixed on me

I fell down on the stone
But could not turn away
My words died in a voiceless moan
When I began to pray

And still it bent above
Its features full in view
It seemed close by and yet more far
Then this world from the farthest star
That tracks the boundless blue

Indeed 'twas not the space
Of earth or time between
But the sea of death's eternity
The gulf o'er which mortality
Has never never been

O bring not back again
The horror of that hour
When its lips opened
And a sound
Awoke the stillness reigning round
Faint as a dream but the Earth shrank
And heavens lights shivered
'Neath its power