The night is swiftly drawing near.  
Within my heart a stroke of fear.
What world awaits me when I sleep?
What gorgeous terrors my mind keeps
From me until I close my eyes
And leave the waking world behind!

In dreams a false reality:
What gives me strength to let me fly
Past crescent moons, through airy lakes,
And watch the heav’nly light rays break
Through clouds of cotton soaring high
Above the fields of warm July?

This realm I pray to never leave;
Its absence I so sorely grieve
When, more and more, I seem to find
The inner fabric of my mind
Distorting into something base:
My dreams now seem to wear your face.

For no amount of light can ease
The pain from dreams that will not cease.
In sleep, or wakening, I know
Your Devil’s face will always show,
For like a sunset in the East,
You’re like a never-dying Beast.

I heard him at first, though barely a sound,
But I saw him, I saw me, on sinister ground.

I am the caution and stillness and sniffing the air,
I am the fearing the danger that’s not even there,
I am the ‘watch where you tread’ and the silence and hush,
The always on lookout, the hardest to touch.

I am the quickness and briskness and swiftness and speed,
I am the flash of a tail and a warning to heed,
I am the bounding and leaping and steam in the woods,
The danger apparent, the fear understood.

And I felt myself crying, for as soft as the breeze,
My beautiful deer melted into the trees.

Lo! On the wing of heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of the sky he sails,
Unspeaking, rapid, immensely strong,
His silent shadow is borne along
By his steeds of fog and cloud and hail,
The earth does shake and the skies do wail.

The skies darken fast, and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in a lurid haze,
Then black, a black of a starless night
When clouds descend and block all light.
I stand, I wait, I hold no fear,
My body poised and my mind is clear.

He is come! He is come! Do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.

And he sends through the shade a funeral ray—
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
And with the glare comes a heart-wrenching cry,
Solemn, grave and joy deprived.

And with the cry falls fast the tears,
Lashing, bitter, punishing, drear.
His tears the lashing rain that breaks
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.

Darker—still darker! The whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
His agony, high up in the thunder cloud!
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all!

I stand, braced ‘gainst his icy breath
And speak, my voice strong – I’ve no fear of death.
“Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
Calm thy storm, I know thy pain!
I too lost my lover – my heart was enchained!”

“Thy agony is clear, but why dost thou cry?
For can ye not see that before you ‘tis I?
I’ve roamed o’er hill, mountain, valley and glen –
I have searched for too long to lose thee again!
My love! Reach down to the earth and clasp me securely
And united together forever we’ll be!”