Dreamland

9Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

10And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

11With forms that no man can discover

12For the dews that drip all over;

13Mountains toppling evermore

14Into seas without a shore;

15Seas that restlessly aspire,

16Surging, unto skies of fire;

17Lakes that endlessly outspread

18Their lone waters — lone and dead,

19Their still waters — still and chilly

20With the snows of the lolling lily.

21By the lakes that thus outspread

22Their lone waters, lone and dead, —

23Their sad waters, sad and chilly

24With the snows of the lolling lily, —

25By the mountains — near the river

26Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —

27By the gray woods, — by the swamp

28Where the toad and the newt encamp, —

29By the dismal tarns and pools

30 Where dwell the Ghouls, —

31By each spot the most unholy —

32In each nook most melancholy, —

33There the traveller meets aghast

34Sheeted Memories of the past —

35Shrouded forms that start and sigh

36As they pass the wanderer by —

37White-robed forms of friends long given,

38In agony, to the Earth — and Heaven.

39For the heart whose woes are legion

40'Tis a peaceful, soothing region —

41For the spirit that walks in shadow

42'Tis — oh, 'tis an Eldorado!

43But the traveller, travelling through it,

44May not — dare not openly view it;

45Never its mysteries are exposed

46To the weak human eye unclosed;

47So wills its King, who hath forbid

48The uplifting of the fringed lid;

49And thus the sad Soul that here passes

50Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

51By a route obscure and lonely,

52Haunted by ill angels only.

53Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

54On a black throne reigns upright,

55I have wandered home but newly

56From this ultimate dim Thule.