Collected Works (Vol. II)

38 ORACLES You guess how gladly to the door I rushed And flung it wide. Why! no one’s there! Arouse ! Iam asleep. What horror came and crushed My whole soul’s life out as some shadow brushed My body and passed in? All sense allows At last the fearful truth—This is the house ! This is my old house on the marsh, and here, Here is the terror of the distant sea Moaning, and here the wind that wails, the drear Groans like a ghost’s, the desolate house of fear Whence I fled once from my great enemy— This is the house! O speechless misery ! Here the great silver candlesticks illume The agéd book, the blackness blazoned o’er With golden characters and scarlet bloom Twined in the blue-tinged sigils wrought for doom, And dreadful names of necromancer’s lore Written therein : so stood my room before When the hissed whisper came, ‘‘ Beware! Beware ! They’re coming !” and “‘ They’re coming !”” when the wind Bore the blank echoes of their stealthy care To creep up silently and find me there, Hid in the windowless old house, stark blind . For fear—and then—what horrors lurked behind The door firm barred !—and thus they cried in Vain : , . ‘* Open the door !”” Then crouched I mad with fear Till at the dawn their footsteps died again. They can do nothing to me—that is plain— While the door bars them! What is it runs clear Truth in my mind? Once more they may be near ? And then came memory. stood And—what had brushed me as it passed? What froze My dream to this awakening—fearful flood Of horror loosed, loosing a sweat of blood, An agony of terror on these brows? God! God! Indeed, indeed this is the house ! Wide the portal The candles sputtered and went out. I stood Fettered by fear, and heard the lonely wind Lament across the marsh. A frenzied flood Of hate and loathing swept across my mood, And with a shudder I flung the door to. Mind And body sank a huddled wreck behind. Nought stirred. Draws hither the grim doom of Fate? A long, long while. Now—in the central core Of my own room what accent of keen hate, Triumphant malice, mockery satiate, Rings in the voice above the storm’s wild roar? It cries ‘‘ Open the door ! Open the door !” ANIMA LUNAE. Written partly under the great rock Sigiri, in Ceylon, partly in Arabia, near Aden, ZOHRA the king by feathered fans Slept lightly through the mid-day heat. Swart giants with drawn yataghans Guard, standing at his head and feet, Zohra, the mightiest of the khans! Each slave Circassian like a moon Sits smiling, burning with young bloom Of dawn, and weaves an airy tune Like a white bird’s song bright and bold That dips a fiery plume. So the song lulled, lazily rolled In tubes of silver, lutes of gold ;