Chapter 2

When earthly homes are tombed in dust, And Life forsakes geotic shoals; When midst the tombs of penetence, When coffins damp, and slimmy clay, Each Lordly Helm is tossed in trust To spiral vaults from plasmic holes, Convolving cyclones spin him hence As agate torches light his way. Unmutteréd sighs teem in the air As structural stars pass him by, And twisting clouds shape eerie forms Until he reaches Satan's home. Unholy visions curse and swear, Gyte vypers lull each demon's sigh, Giant Dragons whom no Remorse storms, Shake fists at opals in a dome. And Cesspools vext with odours strong From stifling shard and putrid dung, 'Mid caverns large and Cauldrons deep, Vile squats in teeming pewter burn; And shrieking vypers wield a prong Above a monster, quarter'd hung. The Tasmanian Devils keep The sod turn'd in a gyre's urn That no lost soul can undulate: Hence seers and sages, tossed in sin, Rant rubics to each reigning king, Each glowing pyre is fed with oil By afreets reared on bottled hate; Infernal tapers light this Inn As poisoned vapours to us cling; Re-embered beacons on this soil Flare spastic shadows to each tomb.

In vain we sigh for fleeing grace Within the pale of turbid dyes! In vain we look for hope, sweet rest, Within this crypt of whistling Doom! When in monastic nights of haze The battlements retard giant sighs; When marshalléd mists from out the West Cloak ramparts black with ughly light, A rubic Soldan rakes each ghaut, Each sleeping vandal, imp and soul. No astral eyes laugh from these skies, No nightingales sing in the night; A dungeoned curse that villains wrought Rasp each eternal vault and shoal. Then one-eyed mongrels split the dyes Of roaring winds and raging storms, Dim shapes flee to the haunts of gore,-- Each Cyclopean Dragon's goal! And groaning cries from maidens fair Is heard by spectral, gangrel forms,-- The writhing thin is flayed some more! Its secret sins,--Black deeds of Soul-- Is scourged as copper-burnished hair Hangs from her alabaster head, Both feet and arms are screwed till black-- A sign that Hell reigns on, unstunned. Then incense swung by priestesses, Salute the newly, plunder'd dead, The bloody sight upon the wrack, Where cringing groans once rose unsummed, Is cover'd by the murderess.

Where restless hawks and chainless ghouls Blink bleary orbs at dust and stone; And glozing night-gnomes love the sight That geysers toss upon their crest, Feal afrites bathe in a pool And wash each harlot's bloody bone. Scorpions on serai's height Peer at each forge's raging breast, Whilst faffling gumps and hairless seers Stretch shanks and arms and yawn till hoarse, And vapours green and beacons red, Feared coming Dawn, and fled in haste; The bulwarks that each hoodlum fears, Sink in a cajon's livid course; The winds and storms are silent, dead, As barriers red bathe the waste. What of the sight when Horrors swirl, When oceans ring with Terror's roll? What of the galley-decks and wrecks That felt the force of angry Hell? When kingdoms fought each warring Earl, The incubi cursed each lost soul; When vandals broke the idols' necks, Giant battle-axes smote each dell. And, then came there galvanic gloom! An acrid oath and savage howl, Hurl'd at an idol's austere ghoul By grizzled rogue and mocking gnome, Perturbéd as vandals shine and bloom In robes of pearl and tazzled cowl, Throw Hecate's spawn into a pool Who stung them with a poisoned bone. This wanton witch of evil fame, Vamped with both hatred, murder, lust, Speeds cycles of the Future's curse And damns each goblin, skink and knave. Then pyres and ghauts flare once again, The halls are swept with burning dust, Six Dragons bear the dead one's hearse Unto the newly, opened grave.

Ere the quaking Dawn shakes its crown To tower'd peaks and hyoids red That hide blind fathoms of this sea, An opal light arrays each plain; Each naiad rumps on velvet down; A bat-shapped Buzzard makes its bed; A red-tongued Gecko storms each lee. Then apes and adders writhe with pain As Cauldrons vomit oils that burn; 'Mid churning storms of stinging sleet, Vial haunts of gore spill their quest And murder with unholy lust, Wilst fagots, beacons, torches, turn Hell's Pompeian shoals to heat; And viscid mists rise in the West-- Dank treasures of Damnation's dust! In search of silence, sleep and rest.

When in a vale we lie and dream Of sanded beach and laughing skies, When Fancy lifts her wings and soars To agate strands and ocean's breast, A gangrel soul begins to scream Black tokens of prevailing sighs As furnace-ovens sweat giant pores. And other things perturb each crypt, Each vulture's brood and figent owls: A belching mountain in the South Hurls boulders thro' the fearful night: A demon-quire rants from script, Led by staccato raspings, howls; A meteor vaults a Cauldron's mouth; A sombre maid doth long for light. Bleak wintry winds engulf us all-- Hosannah! cry the fretful mobs; White-heated storms assail all heads-- Triumphal pæons shake the air! Unnumberéd gawks roam thro' each hall-- Where Typhon sits, a maiden sobs! Conscience stabs our nightly beds, Remorse leers daily at dame Care.

A Donga, deep with squirming gnats And acrid coils,--a hole of Death! And runnels thick with arid dung, Flow past a Temple's swoll'n arch, Where warring tribes of hungry cats Fish for green lizards filched of breath; A palace-dome where runes are sung As Satan views his squadron's march, Flare twin mineral lights of blue That lure each legion foul of home. Swarm Trojans right and left with sword; Skirr gloppened worriers thro' the night; Roar puteals that toads eschew; Hiss brown snakes to each toothless gnome, Affrighted at the raving horde That crash thro' leprous filth and light-- Disastrous sights of men gone mad! And pyramidal wall of rock Are battle-grounds for waging lust: A clashing lance spun vypers round The gyrus rind where helots clad Each Thaumaturgist in a frock, The sign of which spake added trust Unto each ghoul-king's able hound. Crafty Lords of militant mien, Led vanquished to the slaughter-pen; Thumb-screws and bastinados work Both Devils' pomp and Soldans' joy; And tantrums coarse in cesspools teem As women sob for dying men: The wracks that djinnee fear and shirk, Are Torture's friend--A Monster's toy!

The rayless styes that guard the bones Of fall'n kings and grizzled hordes, The mildewed screes that hold the skulls Of shambling spectres, wraiths, and souls, Now waft the spiréd, rasping tones Of risen helots, princes, lords; And all up-rising mists from hulls That stranded on these jejune shoals, Evaporate when amber lights Cleave phantom-screens and huddles black. (For this each pixie sings for cheer) Arcadian sights then hold sway: Each corporal gump loves the sights-- The hidden past (an endless track) Reviews each garneréd Greek and year, Each warrior bold and lassie gay.

Sanious lights beyond the height, Imbosked dysodile vaults of dwale As ulexite flare in the rocks Where implex aisles lead to gyte doom, Lure illaqueate Thought to flight, And at a Cyon, chained in stall, Whom mad Medeas shore of locks, Chase Fancy's wings where hazards bloom. Here herculean dwangs of gold, Clasped in talons of Circe's son, Pry portals of Teocalli as, When hyoids blaze like sea-linkt skies, Incondite imps seek grovels cold, Unfathomed haunts that scyle each sun, We see above the lees green grass Where pixies laugh with dancing eyes,-- King Wonder's sight that holds each heart! Above the rind of Ursa's wake, Past shadows vague and sunless suns, Giant visions of the cancelléd past Rise from the void and play their part. Demeter floats around a lake; Where waters with a naiad runs, Hector's shot by Archilles' dart; Where Orestes stabs his mother, Agamemnon sleeps on in cold; Aegisthus robs a queen of all; Andromache sobs tears of woe. And Clytaemenestra's lover, Like Menelous, is strong and bold: Aeneas on a burning wall Carries Anchises from the show. Then vulgar scenes stare at each soul, Hair-raising visions greet each eye; Priam's son is dragged round ancient Troy, Tied fast to a chariot's tail; Andromeda's doomed as Death's toll; Patroclus dies with a deep sigh. Phyrrhus sacks Troy with a devilish joy; Hecuba's nineteen sons now wail As Mycenae and Tiryns are burn'd: The Scaean Gate is storm'd by Peers! Archæans and Phrygians bold Have fought with Hatred's biting lust. Telemachus whom the Fates have spurn'd, Finds Ulysses in twenty years; Thessalian Soldans in gold, Like Dædalus, slept on in dust As Penlope winged for distant zones. Then Syran airs held each ear: Bright carvels glowed with rubic wine, Giant cyphers flared each Lordling's name Within the haunts of dungeoned domes, Where jazels peer the eyes of Fear, And owls with a scorpion dine-- Twin Monarch's play the dice's game.

When beacons urticate each eye, Noctivagous ghouls haste to stroke Each goblin shank of hoary sage. Then pomp of gloom breaks into bloom, The Temple's arch cracks as we sigh, A clashing sound above that spoke Blind wrath unto each Wizard's rage, Revealed the chasm of stark Doom. Unto the peaks and gables black, Syrian airs like Orpheus Lull sequesteréd afrites to sleep, A witch smites her high biforous-- A symbol of king Typhon's wrack! Where crystal lamps shine most glorious, Twin legions lie in cajons bleak,-- Tokens of Hell invidious! Then fades the burnished light on high; Magicians stave their heads in dust, The vermin feed on reeking bones, Each gnome sobs to a green-horn'd toad. And monarchs of this dungeoned sky Untomb each son in sacred trust As vypers sound their rasping tones, Farewell the ancient Greek's abode! Then spectres of the tower'd night, (Vultures of the sun, moon and stars) And bezzling parasites of dawn, Haunt ichnolite of mourners cold; Then purple sins bloom in the light As vypers drive queens in bright cars; Where dragons root the blistere'd lawn, There reigns a curdling monster bold. To scour these lanes of strobic gloom-- Infernal doom by mongrels' wrought! To pace these aisles of whistling heat, Eternal signs of souls gone wrong! And when a skelp cleaves siffling doom, And vapours scyle a greenish ghaut, Rebellious vandals stamp their feet As rulling Cyons wield hell's prong. Then domes and walls sweat savage rage, Each gangrel gnome is toss'd by fear, The tombs provoke each inmate's keep To curse the horrid atmosphere, Where ghouls their battle-axes wage, Froth devils' pomp throughout the year; Where lizards o'er tath do creep, Bivouacs a horney-fisted seer.

To groves of wind-swept ulmus' bear, And siffling mists beyond a bell That hide veiled shadows of a peak Above the stationed domes of red, Augueries of a marching pair,-- Twin demons of unconqueréd Hell! Spell visions that the soffins leak That felt the besom of the dead, Just as the Twilight's scarlet urn Is seen from heights unfathomed, strong. There runnels of green waters cold, Toss lepers from their murky breast; There venom-oils and tapers burn To light the way of souls gone wrong,-- Blood-stainéd each idol's crown of gold Where battle-wrecks seek figent rest!

To the distant porphyry mount Where agate torches shine most bright, And syrinx's float music's charm O'er the jargling herds of tombed, A joggling javel begins to count, With bleary eyes of grayish light, The rubies on each idol's arm, And whisper words unto the tombed. Now to a churning gyre's pool We haste to see a weird show, Where Lordly Helms in vials squirm, Each mongrel scoundrel's olpe of wine! A Morgan gambles with a ghoul, A Belmont writhes with sizzling woe, A Rockefeller leads each worm, Another's known as T. F. Ryan. The browless whelp of oily fame Is made to dig the burning soil, The sheckles of a Pierpont king, Secures no prestige in this Inn. The gambling ghost whose middle name Is "Fortune", spins within the swirl Of waters cold and oceans' ring, Condemned, forsaken for his sin. On earth they plunder'd, robbed and stole From month to month and year to year; There Franchise-stealers cracked with leers As Plebeians stung, groaned with might. Now one and all damn'd on this shoal Yuck addling brains and shriek with fear, Now all shrink at Hell's laughing seers As Remorse storms the ughly night. Here Pat McCarrens filch no vote, A Grady eats no mellow pea, A Murphy owns no City Hall, No Jeromes skew at dices' song. On Vellum gray their sins are wrote To murmurs of each sullen lee, Racked with the wand of death and pall, They blast their heads as souls gone wrong. No presidential timber's found Within these caverns, pools or dung; No two-faced B's or bloated T's, Lie to laymen, vassals, hordes. Here politicians hear the sound Of ballots that their hearts have wrung, Of burning pyres and blister'd lees That scorch these one-time kings and lords. Here Conventions hold our eyes As Dragons smite a gravel dome. The kings of Finance, skinn'd and shorn, Are list'ners in these halls of gloom. Their deeds are read, they heave giant sighs, Thumb-screws and wracks rake skin and bone, In cajons bleak, each corpse forlorn, Is sunk as trophies of king Doom. No Depews sell their patron's love, No faffling Platts guard treasures strong, No Parkers, Roots,--The crafty things! Betray a country's hope and trust. No palm is brought them by a dove, No minions shant their praise in song, The poisoned zimbs add to the stings Of conscience lost and raging lust. Each one-time king of earthly fold Is skinn'd alive then cooked in oil; Some frazzled Astor dames and fools Now eat their claws and chew a bone. A monarch known as Leopold, Writhes in a cavern's squeezing coil; Here man-born helms are but the tools Of Satan and each prowling gnome. Their toes are screwed and eyes are bored, Their ears are shorn and lips are split, Each head is cracked, all tongues are cut, By vypers red and bloody ghouls. Affrighted as the dames are gored, Each Sybarite his teeth doth grit, The huddled pirates in a hut, Shriek help unto the roaring pools. And moaning airs their sorrows tell That some unfathomed force hath bred. Night-hawks rasp sins of women, men, Who sold their honour, soul and name. And tower'd screes that pierce giant hell Are treasure-houses for the dead: Each rich man writhes within a den, Society dames proclaim their shame. And offal, shard and putrid dung, Is by affluent daughters born. When in the ribboned mists above A beacon flares and torches burn, A Soldan from green earth is hung; His heartless queen is cursed, forsworn, Their souls house neither hope nor love Within Damnation's burning urn. Repress'd with hate and unspent rage As charnel howls clash in each hall, Each gyving hydra rends the air With curses, hawps as rambling souls, Lured by a grizzled warrior sage, Storm moats before each bristling wall And die as imps are bade to swear-- Infernal trophies of these shoals! Immingled dreams their senses storm As Westward shadows cloak each lee; Where censers blaze they drag their limbs, These cursed, forsaken whelps of hell! Their ghastly sins on vellum's sworn, Attested, sealed, they bend each knee! Where devils rant blood-curdling hymns, A raving wench drowns in a well. Unto the coals of feveréd pyres That glare like carcants red and white; And glowing rubies in the dust That lure each man-born skink and whelp, The spastic cries and moaning sighs Attest to Typhon's weird dight,-- And Satan's ichor of green lust, Provokes the lashing heat and skelp.

Within the cathedral vaults of gloom, The gorgeous pomp of the flayed, In banded gold and marble flesh, Speak of auguries to the damn'd, Till, when censers' lights flare and bloom, And shapes of men are laid arrayed In gomes of steel, we tred the mesh And grandeur of a conjured stand, Where coral wreathes each hussy's brow, Whose broken arms portray hell's lust, Of whistling winzes, syrt and domes That gleaming broths in anger wrought, 'Mid hiss of snakes and oils. So now, When plunderéd tombs betray their trust, And vandals screech at roving gnomes, All raise a voice and curse each ghaut.

Beyond the ring and roll of hell-- And spiral lofts of quartz and gold-- We skirr upon the crutch of haste And cleave the abyss, cold and bleak. There jejune fossils lie to tell Of pleiocene days' garneréd fold; Gray bones that pierce this weird waste Lie mounted on a torrid peak; Principalities of the past, Lie scatter'd in the mildewed dust; Serai's built in ages gone, Now crumble at a sound, a voice. And Boulders that the Djinnee cast As Vengeance swirl'd the heated dust, Now rock as devils rasp a son, And vampyres dance round and round. And where a dim, unstudded dome Leak odours strong and palsied light-- Twins of the Gloom! as some mad soul Assails Typhon's battling walls, A glowing fire of this home Of deadly dews and poisoned night, Bathes monstrous this untower'd shoal. Convulsed with fear as aisles and halls Roar like giant cauldrons mad for gore, Icarian gumps and devils bold, Assault each marshalléd mount and scree. Then spectacles greet us again Upon this shadowed, foreign shore: A pond'rous dwang of virgin gold, Is filched from altars that we see, Just as the tomb-sweats pour like rain. And distant ghauts where jazels burn,-- (A burning tomb where hissing oils Drip on a flayed and bottled wench That some abhorrent spawn of death Filched from the wrack of Terror's urn As stagnent breath unwinds its coils) Spout uncoped shard unto a bench Where sights of men-wrecks gasp for breath, Whilst quickly from a bowelless whelp Drop ghastly stones of scarlet hue That brazen imps hurl thro' the air At sobbing wraiths and furrowed souls, Wrought by a fiend and conjured skelp As men and women hold a pew Within a turgid, acrid lair,-- Infernal aisles of yawning shoals!

T'ward cyphers bright and terrible, Where Doom sits poised as Satan yawns,-- Each Vulture's home and arid shoal! We hurl a curse and damn the hordes That call each monster horrible. Then craftily he moves his pawns (Whenas a moan escapes each soul) As bleary sons of noble lords Sway twin censers' fumes in silence, Until in myrtle groves we see A blazing arch where agate eyes Doth peer malignly from a crypt Thro' turbid phials of violence,-- A scene of impish sorcery! Where, in furbished chambers there lies-- As vypers write on evil script The ghastly deeds that sinners wrought-- A glow-worm's fagot that arrays Dim shapes of souls of men that were. And cyphers nights of doomes to be, Till flaring pyres and yon red ghaut-- So monstrous bright that some one prays-- And Vizy's carvel starts to stir, Shape abhorrent signs on each lee.

Into the dusky coals we peer, And musing at the luring flames, We watch each isle of crystal green. Anear the billows swirl with rage, 'Mid lashing waves that cope king Fear To strands and sands where elfin games Make rich each midnight's fleecy dream That some Mad wand'ring, goblin sage, Provoked from coffers of each brain, Gleam in each tossing breast of foam, Or shines from purple decks and domes A ruddy carcant huge and large; Or, when sea-linkt clouds, garbed in rain, And behemoths sink to briny home, A star that shines from foreign zones Guide carvels old and Satan's barge O'er blue profounds of the deep, And gladden souls of men; yet, stunned, Tho' trembling, to a roaring mouth, A horn'd magician locked in death, On whom two hectic harlots peep, Sinks in abyssal depths unsummed, Whilst him he fought hastes to the South,-- A hoary fiend of rasping breath!

And now we watch a maiden flee, Past seas and ice-mounts oriflammed With crystal diamonds red and bright, Where Persephonê hath breathed a jem, And frozen jazels that we see, Alife with lusts of curst and damn'd, Tho' windblown, thro' the moonless night, She wanders with her anadem On golden hair; nor doth she haste When scarlet eyes peer thro' the snow, But cavernéd mouths of grottoes black, And storm-swept flight of dragons bold, She passes as she treads the waste, Off to the haunts of ghoullish show, Where fires writhe and whispers track Her wake unto the peaks of cold, Above whose tower'd dome she sees The tombs of father, mother, all; Ay, now weeps she as the head-stones Letter large, her unburied kin. Now with her trembling arms and knees, And back against the slimmy wall, She vents her tears and choking moans, A daughter cursed within this Inn. And witches long for ease, so, Erelong they peer at waters green That pour in forges dank and cold, Whence glare the eyes of Hell in lust As Cyclops stem the pyre's glow, 'Mid haunts of sin and purple sheen Of shales and husks of monsters told As vultures to both scale and dust. Then wing they for the western strands Of boweréd vales and lulling dells, Where silence holds the winds at bay, And myrtles stir the sylvan air. There tow'rs and the russet sands Make fine the tunes of ringing bells That echo to the skies of gray, Where phosphorescent lanterns flare. And twilights of the lofty aisles, Thro' silver mists and streaks of blood, Crucifixion looms cold and white; Oaths of prurient blasphemy Echo to the sequesteréd isles; An ivory pyx that rides the flood On which fantasms spin their light, Curse each soul's eternal enemy. Within a pool where writhing coils Shape cyphers bold and gorey thought,-- Two shadowed sklayres of Doom and Set! The foam-dreams of the newly dead Ascend. To hazards that the oils Eschewed, haste dryades that were taught To dance. And, whilst all souls forget The chasms deep and oriflammed, The spastic lights of a green room, Dim torches show the jeweled tombs Wherein are hid the studded crowns Of Eastern queens; or, when high-bred Dames pick from Death's unbroken womb The coral wreaths and poppy blooms, Two priestesses in scarlet gowns Curse loudly as the royal dead Are strewn with palmy leaves and dyes. And crimsons adders on the hulls, Search for toadstools smeared with blood. And livid lamps where vypers spoon, As some bad harlot shrieks and cries Her Nature's sins unto three skulls, A shameless gnome bathes in hell's flood The thighs he filched from a gray tomb.