Ulalume

by Poe, 1847

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll—
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

(just the first two of ten stanzas)

...

Man, I wish I could write poetry. If I could, this is what I’d aim for, suspended over the Lovecraftian abyss at the low-point of the catenary footbridge as I am, swaying above and within the darkness. Reading Poe’s words I find myself a child again, dreaming (or not?) of white clouds swaddling an alien moon, crisp dark leaves at my feet as I stumble uncertainly though strangled wooded paths. And – of course, ever of course – that leaden thesaurus tucked under my arms, weilded like a crucifix to ward off the evil that lurked just beyond my sights at the edges of the periphery ...