I have lain for an hour or twain Awake, and the tempest is beating On the roof, and the sleet on the pane, And the winds are three enemies meeting;
And I listen and hear it again, My name, in the silence, repeating. Then dumbness of death that must slay, Till the midnight is burst like a bubble;
And out of the darkness a ray — ‘ T is she! the all beautiful double; With a face like the breaking of day, Eyes dark with the magic of trouble.
I move not; she lies with her lips At mine; and I feel she is drawing My life from my heart to their tips, My heart where the horror is gnawing;
My life in a thousand slow sips, My flesh with her sorcery awing. She binds me with merciless eyes; She drinks of my blood, and I hear it
Drain up with a shudder and rise To the lips, like the serpent's, that steer it And she lies and she laughs as she lies, Saying, “Lo, thy affinitized spirit!”
Then I hear — as if torturing swords Had shivered and torments had grated Hoarse iron deep under; and words As of sins that howled out and awaited
A fiend who lashed into their hords, And a demon who lacerated. And I shriek and lie clammy and stark, As the curse of a devil mounts higher,
Up — out of damnation and dark, Up — a hobble of hoofs that is dire; I feel that his mouth is a spark, His features, of filth and of fire.
“To thy body's corruption, thy grave! Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!” And a blackness rolls down like a wave With a clamor of tongues that are swollen —
And I feel that my flesh is the slave Of a — vampire, diakka, eidolon?
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