What Dreams May Come

I have lain for an hour or twain Awake, and the tempest is beating On the roof and the sleet on the pane, And the winds are three enemies meeting; And I listen and hear it again, My name, in the silence, repeating.

Then dumbness of death; and, moon-gray, In the darkness a light like a bubble, From which, like a single white ray, Comes a woman in loveliness double; Her face is the breaking of day, Her eyes are the night and its trouble.

I move not; she lies with her lips At mine; and I feel she is drawing My life from my heart to their tips, My heart where the horror is gnawing; My life in a hundred slow sips, My soul with her gaze overawing.

She binds me with merciless eyes; She drinks of my blood; and I hear it Drain up with a shudder and rise To the lips, like a serpent's, that steer it; And she lies, and she laughs as she lies, Saying, "Lo! thy affinitized spirit."

I pray--and a gate, as of swords,-- 'Mid torments and tortures huge-grated, Clangs iron deep under; and words Are heard as of sins that awaited A fiend who lashed into their hordes, And a demon who lacerated.

I pray--and lie clammy and stark, As a something mounts higher and higher, Up, out of damnation and dark, With hobbling of hoofs that is dire; A devil, whose breath is a spark, Whose face is of filth and of fire.

"To thy body's corruption! thy grave! Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!" He snarls; and the night, like a wave, Engulfs them with darkness wild swollen.-- Can it be that in sleep I'm a slave Of a thing neither flesh nor eidolon?