Speak! Horrid Monster!

Who, with your wide-cracked and empty chest!

Still in crude, sanguine mail dressed,

Has risen from a shallow-mined Grave to haunt me!

Wrapped not in my fleshy balms;

But: with your wiry, pale palms

Far-outstretched, as if reaching 'round for some unseen fatal bow and quiver,

Why must your cavernous glare, so cruel, taunt me?

Out of those bleak, Abysmal eyes

Yellow lightnings seem to flicker and to rise,

Like when the gray storm-conquered skies

Glisten, thundering, in the Northern Winter;

And, as does the trickling water's flow

Beneath the fast-melting Spring snow,

Came no dim, blunted Voice of woe; but, a Death-like silence, quiet and forever-cold,

From the Heart's hollow, and long-emptied, chamber.