ken arms portray hell's lust,
Of whistling winzes, syrt and domes
That gleaming broths in anger wrought,
'Mid hiss of snakes and oils. So now,
When plundered tombs betray their trust,
And vandals screech at roving gnomes,
All raise a voice and curse each ghaut.

Beyond the ring and roll of hell--
And spiral lofts of quartz and gold--
We skirr upon the crutch of haste
And cleave the abyss, cold and bleak.
There jejune fossils lie to tell
Of pleiocene days' garnered fold;
Gray bones that pierce this weird waste
Lie mounted on a torrid peak;
Principalities of the past,
Lie scatter'd in the mildewed dust;
Serai's built in ages gone,
Now crumble at a sound, a voice.
And Boulders that the Djinnee cast
As Vengeance swirl'd the heated dust,
Now rock as devils rasp a son,
And vampyres dance round and round.
And where a dim, unstudded dome
Leak odours strong and palsied light--
Twins of the Gloom! as some mad soul
Assails Typhon's battling walls,
A glowing fire of this home
Of deadly dews and poisoned night,
Bathes monstrous this untower'd shoal.
Convulsed with fear as aisles and halls
Roar like giant cauldrons mad for gore,
Icarian gumps and devils bold,
Assault each marshalled mount and scree.
Then spectacles greet us again
Upon this shadowed, foreign shore:
A pond'rous dwang of virgin gold,
Is filched from altars that we see,
Just as the tomb-sweats pour like rain.
And distant ghauts where jazels burn,--
(A burning tomb where hissing oils
Drip on a flayed and bottled wench
That some abhorrent spawn of death
Filched from the wrack of Terror's urn
As stagnent breath unwinds its coils)
Spout uncoped shard unto a bench
Where sights of men-wrecks gasp for breath,
Whilst quickly from a bowelless whelp
Drop ghastly stones of scarlet hue
That brazen imps hurl thro' the air
At sobbing wraiths and furrowed souls,
Wrought by a fiend and conjured skelp
As men and women hold a pew
Within a turgid, acrid lair,--
Infernal aisles of yawning shoals!

T'ward cyphers bright and terrible,
Where Doom sits poised as Satan yawns,--
Each Vulture's home and arid shoal!
We hurl a curse and damn the hordes
That call each monster horrible.
Then craftily he moves his pawns
(Whenas a moan escapes each soul)
As bleary sons of noble lords
Sway twin censers' fumes in silence,
Until in myrtle groves we see