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.