Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TOMBLESS MAN; A DREAM, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TOMBLESS MAN; A DREAM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I woke from sleep at midnight; all was dark
Last Line: And the glad waters murmuring to the sun.
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Calm; Dreams; Silence; Sleep; Placid; Undisturbed; Tranquility; Nightmares


I.

I WOKE from sleep at midnight; all was dark,
Solemn, and silent, an unbroken calm:
It was a fearful vision, and had made
A mystical impression on my mind;
For clouds lay o'er the ocean of my thoughts
In vague and broken masses, strangely wild;
And grim imagination wander'd on
'Mid gloomy yew-trees in a churchyard old,
And mouldering shielings of the eyeless hills,
And snow-clad pathless moors on moonless nights,
And icebergs drifting from the sunless Pole,
And prostrate Indian villages, when spent
The rage of the hurricane has pass'd away,
Leaving a landscape desolate with death;
And as I turn'd me to my vanish'd dream,
Clothed in its drapery of gloom, it rose
Upon my spirit, dreary as before.

II.

Alone—alone—a desolate dreary wild,
Herbless and verdureless; low swampy moss,
Where tadpoles grew to frogs, for leagues begirt
My solitary path. Nor sight nor sound
Of moving life, except a grey curlew—
As shrieking tumbled on the timid bird,
Aye glancing backward with its coal-black eye,
Even as by imp invisible pursued—
Was seen or heard; the last low level rays
Of sunset gilded with a blood-red glow
That melancholy moor, with its grey stones
And stagnant water-pools. Aye floundering on,
And on, I stray'd, finding no pathway, save
The runlet of a wintry stream, begirt
With shelvy barren rocks; around, o'erhead,
Yea everywhere, in shapes grotesque and grim,
Towering they rose, encompassing my path,
As 'twere in savage mockery. Lo, a chasm
Yawning, and bottomless, and black! Beneath
I heard the waters in their sheer descent
Descending down, and down; and further down
Descending still, and dashing—now a rush,
And now a roar, and now a fainter fall,
And still remoter, and yet finding still,
For the white anguish of their boiling whirl,
No resting-place. Over my head appear'd,
Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen,
Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky,
Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star
Magnificent, that, with a holy light,
Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart,
As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood,
Drinking the beauty of that gem serene,
How long I wist not; but, when back to earth
Sank my prone eyes, I knew not where I was—
Again the scene had shifted, and the time,
From midnight to the hour when earliest dawn
Gleams in the orient, and with inky lines
The trees seem painted on the girding sky.

III.

A solemn hour!—so silent, that the sound
Even of a falling leaflet had been heard,
Was that, wherein, with meditative step,
With uncompanion'd step, measured and slow,
And wistful gaze, that to the left, the right,
Was often turn'd, as if in secret dread
Of something horrible that must be met—
Of unseen evil not to be eschew'd—
Up a long vista'd avenue I wound,
Untrodden long, and overgrown with moss.
It seem'd an entrance to the hall of gloom;
Grey twilight, in the melancholy shade
Of the hoar branches, show'd the tufted grass
With globules spangled of the fine night-dew—
So fine, that even a midge's tiny tread
Had caused them trickle down. Funereal yews,
Notch'd with the growth of centuries, stretching round
Dismal in aspect, and grotesque in shape,
Pair after pair, were ranged: where ended these,
Girdling an open semicircle, tower'd
A row of rifted plane-trees, inky-leaved,
With cinnamon-colour'd bark; and, in the midst,
Hidden almost by their entwining boughs,
An unshut gateway, musty and forlorn,
Its old supporting pillars roughly rich
With sculpturings quaint of intermingled flowers.

IV.

Each pillar held upon its top an urn,
Serpent-begirt; each urn upon its front
A face—and such a face! I turn'd away—
Then gazed again—'twas not to be forgot:—
There was a fascination in the eyes—
Even in their stony stare; like the ribb'd sand
Of ocean was the eager brow; the mouth
Had a hyena grin; the nose, compress'd
With curling sneer, of wolfish cunning spake;
O'er the lank temples, long entwisted curls
Adown the scraggy neck in masses fell;
And fancy, aided by the time and place,
Read in the whole the effigies of a fiend.
Who, and what art thou? ask'd my beating heart—
And but the silence to my heart replied!
That entrance pass'd, I found a grass-grown court,
Vast, void, and desolate; and there a house,
Baronial, grim, and grey, with Flemish roof
High-pointed, and with aspect all forlorn:
Four-sided rose the towers at either end
Of the long front, each coped with mouldering flags;
Up from the silent chimneys went no smoke;
And vacantly the deep-brow'd windows stared,
Like eyeballs dead to daylight. O'er the gate
Of entrance, to whose folding-doors a flight
Of steps converging led, startled I saw,
Oh, horrible! the same reflected face
As that on either urn; but gloomier still,
In shadow of the mouldering architrave.

V.

I would have turn'd me back—I would have fled
From that malignant, yet half-syren smile;
But magic held me rooted to the spot,
And some inquisitive horror led me on.
Entering I stood beneath the spacious dome
Of a round hall, vacant, save here and there,
Where from the panelings, in mouldy shreds,
Hung what was arras loom-work; weather-stains
In mould appear'd on the mosaic floors,
Of marble black and white—or what was white,
For time had yellow'd all; and opposite,
High on the wall, within a crumbling frame
Of tarnish'd gold, scowl'd down a pictured form
In the habiliments of bygone days—
With ruff, and doublet slash'd, and studded belt—
'Twas the same face—the Gorgon curls the same,
The same lynx eye, the same peak-bearded chin,
And the same nose, with sneering upward curl.

VI.

Again I would have turn'd to flee—again
Tried to elude the snares around my feet;
But struggling could not—though I knew not why,
Self-will and self-possession vaguely lost.
Horror thrill'd through me—to recede was vain;
Fear lurk'd behind in that sepulchral court,
In its mute avenue and grave-like grass;
And to proceed—where led my onward way?
Ranges of doorways branch'd on either side,
Each like the other:—one I oped, and lo!
A dim deserted room, its furniture
Withdrawn; grey, stirless cobwebs from the roof
Hanging; and its deep windows letting in
The pale, sad dawn, than darkness drearier far.
How desolate! Around its cornices
Of florid stucco shone the mimic flowers
Of art's device, carved to delight the eyes
Of those long since but dust within their graves.
The hollow hearth-place, with its fluted jambs
Of clammy Ethiop marble, whence, of yore,
Had risen the Yule-log's animating blaze
On festal faces, tomb-like, coldly yawn'd;
While o'er its centre, lined in hues of night,
Grinn'd the same features with the aspick eyes,
And fox-like watchful, though averted gaze,
The haunting demon of that voiceless home.

VII.

How silent! to the beating of my heart
I listen'd, and nought else around me heard.
How stirless! even a waving gossamer—
The mazy motes that rise and fall in air—
Had been as signs of life; when, suddenly,
As bursts the thunder-peal upon the calm,
Whence I had come the clank of feet was heard—
A noise remote, which near'd, and near'd, and near'd—
Even to the threshold of that room it came,
Where, with raised hands, spell-bound, I listening stood;
And, the door opening stealthily, I beheld
The embodied figure of the phantom head,
Garb'd in the quaint robes of the portraiture—
A veritable fiend, a life in death!

VIII.

My heart stood still, tho' quickly came my breath;
Headlong I rush'd away, I knew not where:
In frenzied haste rushing I ran; my feet
With terror wing'd, a hell-hound at my heels,
Yea! scarce three strides between us. Through a door
Right opposite I flew, slamming its weight,
To shut me from the spectre who pursued.
And lo! another room, the counterpart
Of that just left, but gloomier: on I rush'd,
Beholding o'er its hearth the grinning face,
Another and the same; the haunting face
Reflected, as it seem'd, from wall to wall!
There, opening as I shut, onward he came,
That Broucoloka, not to be escaped,
With measured tread unwearied, like the wolf's
When tracking its sure prey: forward I sprang,
And lo! another room—another face,
Alike, but gloomier still; another door,
And the pursuing fiend—and on—and on,
With palpitating heart and yielding knees,
From room to room, each mirror'd in the last.
At length I reached a porch—amid my hair
I felt his desperate clutch—outward I flung—
The open air was gain'd—I stood alone!

IX.

That welcome postern open'd on a court—
Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt
Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd,
Each on its hoary tablature, half hid
With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank,
The sculptured leer of that hyena face,
Softening as backwards, thro' the waves of time,
Receded generations more remote.
It was a square of tombs—of old, grey tombs,
(The oldest of an immemorial date,)
Deserted quite—and rusty gratings black,
Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults—
And epitaphs unread—and mouldering bones.
Alone forlorn, the only breathing thing
In that unknown, forgotten cemetery,
Reeling, I strove to stand, and all things round
Flicker'd, and wavering, seem'd to wane away,
And earth became a blank; the tide of life
Ebbing, as backward ebbs the billowy sea,
Wave after wave, till nought is left behind,
Save casual foam-bells on the barren sand.

X.

From out annihilation's vacancy,
(The elements, as of a second birth,
Kindling within, at first a fitful spark,
And then a light which, glowing to a blaze,
Fill'd me with genial life,) I seemed to wake
Upon a bed of bloom. The breath of spring
Scented the air; mingling their odours sweet,
The bright jonquil, the lily of the vale,
The primrose, and the daffodil, o'erspread
The fresh green turf; and, as it were in love,
Around the boughs of budding lilac wreathed
The honeysuckle, rich in early leaves,
Gold-tinctured now, for sunrise fill'd the clouds
With purple glory, and with aureate beams
The dew-refreshen'd earth. Up, up, the larks
Mounted to heaven, as did the angel wings
Of old in Jacob's vision; and the fly,
Awakening from its wintry sleep, once more
Spread, humming, to the light its gauzy wings.

XI.

A happy being in a happy place,
As 'twere a captive from his chains released,
His dungeon and its darkness, there I lay
Nestling, amid the sun-illumined flowers,
Revolving silently the varied scenes,
Grotesque and grim, 'mid which my erring feet
Had stumbled; and a brightness darting in
On my mysterious nightmare, something told
The what and wherefore of the effigies grim—
The wolfish, never-resting, tombless man,
Voicelessly haunting that ancestral home—
Yea of his destiny for evermore
To suffer fearful life-in-death, until
A victim suffer'd from the sons of men,
To soothe the cravings of insatiate Hell,
An agony for ages undergone—
An agony for ages to be borne—
Hope, still elusive, baffled by despair.

XII.

Thus as an eagle, from the altitude
Of the mid-sky, its pride of place attain'd,
Glances around the illimitable void,
And sees no goal, and finds no resting-place
In the blue, boundless depths—then, silently,
Pauses on wing, and with gyrations down
And down descends thorough the blinding clouds,
In billowy masses, many-hued, around
Floating, until their confines past, green earth
Once more appears, and on its loftiest crag
The nest, wherein 'tis bliss to rest his plumes
Flight-wearied; so, from farthest dreamland's shores,
Where clouds and chaos form the continents,
And reason reigns not, Fancy back return'd
To sights and sounds familiar—to the birds
Singing above, and the bright vale beneath,
With cottages and trees, and the blue sky,
And the glad waters murmuring to the sun.





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