Our Mournful Home

Come ye, come ye to my side.
In my eyes to the moonlight now has died,
My mirrored soul the fairest reaper grips
Bearing balm to the poison of my lips
And dreaming through the final sphere
A voice rings the tolling clear;
My coin to the river bed
That guides to the House of the Dead.

Life: Mere vision from whence we wake
When our dream the angels take:
Our breath: each but a prelude
To the heavens openly viewed—
One last wind to the sepulcher
Where eternal we ne’er shall stir,
Where the vermin of the shadowed deep
About our wakening shall creep.

The loving worms—blessed their feast
Upon the still deceased.
They’re crawling! The phantoms scream
As they fall from out the dream
And crying, crying in the crypt, crying
Upon the chill stone lying
Entreat the gods, “May we rise
To the towers of paradise?”

But our souls in breathless despair
Our fallen bodies ensnare
Ever and anon—ever and anon
Where the abysses silently yawn
We lie—wakened in the catacomb
Our paradise, our Hell; our mournful home.

The stench eternal as we rot,
Our dream at length by pain forgot,
So begging for the peaceful sky
We in our torment lie.