The Dream Of Dread.

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?