The night of storms has passed

The night of storms has passed

The sunshine bright and clear

Gives glory to the verdant waste

And warms the breezy air

And I would leave my bed

Its cheering smile to see

To chase the visions from my head

Whose forms have troubled me

In my all the hours of gloom

My soul was rapt away

I dreamt I stood by a marble tomb

Where royal corpses lay

It was just the time of eve

When parted ghosts might come

Above their prisoned dust to grieve

And wail their woeful doom

And truly at my side

I saw a shadowy thing

Most dim and yet its presence there

Curdled my blood with ghastly fear

And ghastlier wondering

My breath I could not draw

The air seemed uncanny

But still my eyes with maddening gaze

Were fixed upon its fearful face

And its were fixed on me

I fell down on the stone

But could not turn away

My words died in a voiceless moan

When I began to pray

And still it bent above

Its features full in view

It seemed close by and yet more far

Then this world from the farthest star

That tracks the boundless blue

Indeed 'twas not the space

Of earth or time between

But the sea of death's eternity

The gulf o'er which mortality

Has never never been

O bring not back again

The horror of that hour

When its lips opened

And a sound

Awoke the stillness reigning round

Faint as a dream but the Earth shrank

And heavens lights shivered

'Neath its power