Madison Cawein - The Haunted Room lyrics

Its casements' diamond disks of gla** Stare myriad on a terrace old, Where urns, unkempt with ragged gra**, Foam o'er with frothy cold. The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone; The frozen fount is hooped with pearl; Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone, Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl. And to each rose-tree's stem that bends With silver snow-combs, glued with frost, It seems each summer rosebud sends Its airy, scentless ghost. The stiff Elizabethan pile Chatters with cold thro' all its panes, And rumbling down each chimney file The mad wind shakes his reins. * * * * * * * Lone in the Northern angle, dim With immemorial dust, it lay, Where each gaunt casement's stony rim Stared lidless to the day. Drear in the Northern angle, hung With olden arras dusky, where Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung For shadowy Isolds fair. Lies by a dingy cabinet A tarnished lute upon the floor; A talon-footed chair is set Grotesquely by the door. A carven, testered bedstead stands With rusty silks draped all about; And like a moon in murky lands A mirror glitters out. Dark in the Northern angle, where In musty arras eats and clings The drowsy moth; and frightened there The wild wind sighs and sings Adown the roomy flue and takes And swings the ghostly mirror till It shrieks and creaks, then pulls and shakes The curtains with a will. A starving mouse forever gnaws Behind a polished panel dark, And 'long the floor its shadow draws A poplar in the park. I have been there when blades of light Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane; I have been there at dead of night, But never will again... She grew upon my vision as Heat s**ed from the dry summer sod; In taffetas as green as gra** Silent and faint she trod; And angry j**els winked and frowned In serpent coils on neck and wrist, And 'round her dainty waist was wound A zone of silver mist. And icy fair as some bleak land Her pale, still face stormed o'er with night Of raven tresses, and her hand Was beautiful and white. Before the ebon mirror old Full tearfully she made her moan, And then a co*k crew far and cold; I looked and she was gone. As if had come a sullying breath And from the limpid mirror pa**ed, Her presence past, like some near d**h Leaving my blood aghast. Tho' I've been there when blades of light Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane; Tho' I've been there at dead of night, I never will again.