Nemesis

Written 1917

        
   Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, 
      Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, 
   I have lived 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 whirled 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-forked lightning is rending, 
      That resound with hysterical cries; 
   With the moans of invisible daemons, that out of the green waters rise. 

   I have plunged like a deer through 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 through 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 scanned the vast ivy-clad palace, 
      I have trod its untenanted hall, 
   Where the moon rising up from the valleys 
      Shows the tapestried things on the wall; 
   Strange figures discordantly woven, that I cannot endure to recall. 

   I have peered from the casements in wonder 
      At the mouldering meadows around, 
   At the many-roofed 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-decked 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. 

   Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, 
      Past the wan-mooned abysses of night, 
   I have lived 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.