Faint from the bell the ghastly echoes fall,

That grates within the grey cathedral tower —

Let me not enter through the portal tall,

Lest the strange spirit of the moonless hour

Should give a life to those pale people, who

Lie in their fretted niches, two and two —

Each with his head on pillowy stone reposed,

And his hands lifted, and his eyelids closed.

From many a mouldering oriel, as to flout

Its pale, grave brow of ivy-tressed stone,

Comes the incongruous laugh, and revel shout —

Above, some solitary casement, thrown

Wide open to the wavering night wind,

Admits its chill — so deathful, yet so kind,

Unto the fevered brow and fiery eye

Of one, whose night hour passeth sleeplessly.

Ye melancholy chambers! I could shun

The darkness of your silence, with such fear,

As places where slow murder has been done.

How many noble spirits have died here —

Withering away in yearnings to aspire,

Gnawed by mocked hope — devoured by their own fire!

Methinks the grave must feel a colder bed

To spirits such as these, than unto common dead.