Spleen

When the low sky weighs oppressive like a coffin-cover
Upon the groaning spirit, prey to long ennuis;
When all the horizons, and the charnel clouds that hover,
Pour out a black day sadder than the darknesses;

When the earth is changed into a humid prison-house,
Where Hope, with futile fearful wing, time after time,
Beats on the dripping wall as might a flittermouse,
Or soars to meet the ceiling's rottenness and grime;

When all the suns are impotent to succor us,
In a vast dungeon barred with ever-shafting rain;
And when a silent people of spiders infamous
Have come to weave their filaments upon our brain.

The bells of all the town, with rage funereal,
Leap out and launch toward the heaven a frightful howling,
Like that of demons homeless and inimical
Who whine for blood and souls, about the steeples prowling.

—And the long hearses, with no music and no drums,
Defile with lentor in my mournful soul; Despair
Weeps, even as Hope, and dire, despotic Anguish comes
To hang her stifling sable draperies everywhere.