Forest of Nightmare

How night thou must now descend
While mists and fell beams bend
And the branches sighing sway
On this margin of decay
Where the travelers echo the rise and fall
Of thy tremulous pall
That welcomes so dear
The tides of illumination, the tides of fear.

The forest thy shadow, thy door
Where in sorrow sadly rot
The things we know no more
With winds of silent thought
In silence of the fading west
We heave out our eternal rest.

Cool flames downward are ill driven
From the ghosts of a dreamless Heaven
To burn away hours of the pitiless black
We drink upon the star-glazed trek
With heads in the quiet breath’s tolling
Of a thousand dark planets rolling
Tastes and summons to feeling and sight
That reach us only in the stillest night.

From strange graves will rise
The ghost that cries
In a sanctuary of wandering eyes
That will not see beyond the dark
Of Death’s newborn, shadowed mark
Upon the paradise that dares to be
Night staring most hideously
Upon a surf of dawns on the make
Bidding the dreams to stir awake
In dews of paralysis that will break
The wanderer who will freeze
In the shadow of those trees
And no tales have ever expressed
That beyond those trees sadly dressed
By shadow there might reside
A dream that never died
But somehow strangely through
Force of will came remotely true.

But soft! Low by the mountainside
To the trees there doth softly ride
A conscious blossoming of mood
That strikes the forest’s solitude
With omen—with omen of coming day
Of he who kneels at bed to pray
To see a sight of dread and sorrow
And to find upon the morrow
A realization of terrors that shall pierce
With poison visions gorgeous and fierce
A myriad Hells burning in unison
To the melody of a demonic sun
On His flaming horror of bleached bone
In that forest of the sorrowful overthrown.