The Nightmare Tarn

I sat beside the moonless tarn alone,
In darkness where a mumbling air was blown—
A molded air, insufferably fraught
With dust of plundered charnels: there was naught
In this my dream but darkness and the wind,
The blowing dust, the stagnant waters blind,
And trees unknown, or pines or cypresses;
Wherefrom a rain of ashes weariless
At whiles fell on me, or was driven by
To feed the tongueless tarn; within the sky
The stars were like a failing phosphor wan
In gutted tombs wherefrom the worms have gone.
But though the dust and ashes in one cloud
Blinded and stifled me as might a shroud,
And though the foul putrescent waters gave
Upon my face the fetors of the grave,
As if therein some rout of skeletons
Had washed the worm-spared tatters from their bones,
Though all was black corruption, and despair,
I could not stir, like mandrake rooted there,
And with mine every breath I seemed to raise
The burden of some charnel of old days,
Where, tier by tier, the leaden coffins lie.
While sluggish black eternities went by,
I waited; on the darkness of my dream
There fell nor lantern-flame nor lightning-gleam,
Nor any gleam of moon or sun; the wind,
Withdrawn as in some sighing tomb, declined,
And all the dust was fallen; the waters drear
Lay still as blood of corpses. Loud and near,
The cry of one who drowned in her despair
Came to me from the filthy tarn; the air
Shuddered thereat, and all my heart was grown
A place of fears the nether hell might own,
And prey to monstrous wings and beaks malign:
For, lo! the voice, O dearest love, was thine!
And I—I could not stir: the dreadful weight
Of tomb on ancient tomb accumulate,
Lay on my limbs, and stifled all my breath,
And when I strove to cry, the dust of death
Had choked my mouth, nor any whisper came
To answer thee, who called upon my name!