Poems used in this pastiche include: “Tamerlane,” “Alone,” “Al Aaraaf,” “To M—.,” “To Isaac Lea.,” “The Sleeper,” “For Annie,” “The Bells,” “The Haunted Palace,” “Spirits of the Dead,” “Ulalume,” “The Dream-Land,” “The Valley of Unrest,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
In the valley of unrest
The breeze—the breath of God
Is a swirl
From a heart whose woes are legion
To those of every region
Whom haunted by ill angels only
In this manner no longer lonely.
Troops of Echoes in Robes of Sorrow
Seek to blight a bright tomorrow.
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the ghouls
The airs that brood, the land good angels tenanted
Stifled the joy and my soul languished.
In my most immemorial year
Was I released from fear.
As I came to know the
Ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither beast nor human—
They are Ghouls:—
They seek to acquire the fever called living
That burns inside my brain.
This one can look within mine eyes and take mine hands
Inhale my sickness to give himself life
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead not he, that groaned within.
It was my choice or chance or curse
To adopt the cause for better or worse
And with it my worldly goods and wit
And soul and body worship it—
But that, while I am dead yet alive
I cannot be, Hades, alone.
Sweet will be mine death – with me to die is rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate life—
These star-litten hours—
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man—
Are an oasis in desert of the blest.
Of a demon in my view—
Whose torments hath just begun—
And boyhood is a summer sun,
Whose waning is the dreariest one.
Let those who come after me
Treat my friend well
Or else face a decree of
His villainous spell.