gles secrets of her lust,
And hurls her voice at Nephele's owl,
Past portals dark, where harlots nurse
Their skinless limbs that Torture bit,
And stamps her feet into the dust
As, into olpes she pours a tear:
And, musing at the clouds of gloom,
She wrinkles face and lifts her hands
To mutter words unto the night.
Whereon a ghoul-king hath writ Fear,
And changes gloom to purple bloom,
The shoals to opal-sanded strands
That reach, past wrecks to crystal light,
Where mossy vales with poppies bloom,
And hastes her flight from Terror's urn,
To onyx seas where agates glow,
And feats her eyes on woes of hell,
Upon the foam-dreams of king Doom,
Where monsters in red cauldrons burn,
'Mid shrieks that from their vitals flow
With airs that rasp each bone-strewn dell.
And sea-linkt skies of charnel black--
A savage dome! streaked scarlet red,
Where maids for demon lovers mourn;
And caskets spew a dusky foam
That quench the thirst of yon lone wrack
That holds the sultry, naked dead,
Who caught the eyes of waves forlorn,
Now bathed in blood in Hecate's home.

There garnet wrought and purple lights
Shine thro' poisoned vials of age
On churning pomps of casements old,
Where, when lofty aisles and halls
Ring rich with tenor runes in nights
Made solemn by a hoary sage
With darkling eyes that gleam like gold,
A prowling vandal storms the walls,
Nursed with dank venom broths and oils.
A blood-shot minx hunts for a man;
In stys and broken pyxs she peers
For him who ruined her honour, soul;
A harlot doomed in clinging coils
That now her longings curse and damn,
Squats on a skull and pulls her ears:
Or, just when she finds her life-goal,--
A cow'ring cur hid from the sight
Beneath a putrid mount of bone,
And tombs grow dank as rising sun
Makes red each dragon in the West,
She splits his heart and rasps with might,
A curse that rides the surging foam,
A message that this dastard son
Dies longing for a fatal quest--
Surcease of soul and conscience lost!
Then rants she sins unto each tomb
That sweat the lusts of those in dust,
And scarlet foam and hiss of oils
That her black deed to domes hath tossed,
Break into writhing life and bloom
As iron crowns and ceptres rust
Of fall'n monarchs crossed in coils.
Anear, two carcants glare like gold;
Afar, a ruby's light of red
Straggles thro' the pellicle