Classic Poem

On the old and haunted mountain,
(There in dreams I dare to climb,)
Where the clear Castalian fountain, —
(Silver fountain,) — ever tinkling,
All the green around it sprinkling,
Makes perpetual rhyme, —
To my dream, enchanted, golden,
Came a vision of the olden
Long-forgotten time.
In the dream-light sitting there,
Under dim and whispering trees,
I saw the ever young and fair,
(Such as one in pictures sees,)
Palm-crowned, ever lovely Maids
That weave imperishable braids
For those sweet lutanists to wear,
Whose music keeps them young and fair, —
Ever fair and ever young,
(Such as one in pictures sees,)
Palm-crowned, young Parnassides!
And ever as the maidens sung,
At each swooning, swooning fall,
Through the air all musical
Thousand, thousand echoes rung —
And the silver fountain flung
Its waters upward, ever tinkling,
All the green around it sprinkling;
And forever as they sung,
At each louder, louder swell,
To the ground the green leaves fell,
Fell the leaves, and new leaves sprung; —
In that tempest musical
Fell the leaves, and ebbed the fountain,
And the echoes from the mountain —
Thousand echoes answered all.
Changed the scene while I was gazing,
And in soul this music praising;
And my eye with wonder dazing,
And my soul with fear amazing,
Into cypress changed the wood,
And the fountain into blood,
While the Maids their dolorous lays sing.

And within the pool lay drifting
Shapes and shadows ever shifting,
Ever shifting, ever lifting,
Like bats and vampyres upon swift wing,
Struggling in the air to rise
From a serpent-coil that ties
Their talons, twining, wreathing, twisting.

And the maidens there a-sitting
Changed to withered beldames knitting,
Adder's tongue and knot-grass, fitting
Wreaths for Bards our souls affrighting
With stone-eyed phantoms of the dark,
Moon-eclipse, and spectre-bark,
Nightmares, ghosts, and ravens flitting,
Whispering, gibbering, croaking, screaming,
O'er a place with phantoms teeming,
Vasty phantoms! staring, dreaming,
Never known in sight or seeming,
Moonlight from their garments streaming,
With the look, and with the moan
Of dead men on the sea alone,
Their frozen eyes with ghost-light gleaming.

And the stream flowed lapping, lapping,
And the leaves stirred tapping, tapping,
And the aged beldames napping,
Dreamed of gently rapping, rapping,
With a hammer gently tapping,
Tapping on an infant's skull,
And of white throats sweetly jagged,
With a ragged butch-knife dull,
And of night-mares neighing, weighing,
On a sleeper's bosom squatting.

Then a pallid beauteous maiden,
Golden ghastly robes arrayed in,
Her dreamy soul thought-freighted, laden,
Such a wondrous strain displayed in,
In a wondrous song of Aidenne,
That all the gods and goddesses
Shook their golden, yellow tresses,
Parnassus' self made half-affrayed in.

For as the wondrous song she sung,
With a subtle solemn tongue,
Like a pall above them hung,
Seemed the heavens fresh and young;
And the trees their shadows flung
Like long-stretched ghosts upon their graves,
Or trembled in the stagnant waves,
To see their pale shapes midway hung.

Mournful yew her forehead bound,
That never smiled nor ever frowned,
And ever at her footfall's sound,
Music rose with solemn stound;
Like a moaning in the ground,
Ran the strains beneath her tread, —
Or, like anthems for the dead,
Crashing upward and around.
The green-clad mountain, forest-crowned,
Seemed a gray and ghastly mound,
Sprites and angels swarmed around,
Vapors had a soul and sound,
Men their ghosts by daylight found,
Flowers seemed blood-spots on the ground.
The rose a bleeding heart did stand,
The white rose reared a corpse-like hand,
And earth and heaven seemed in a swound.