Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
            And chasms, and caves, and Titian woods,
            With forms that no man can discover
            For the dews that drip all over;
            Mountains toppling evermore
            Into seas without a shore;
            Seas that restlessly aspire,
            Surging, unto skies of fire;
            Lakes that endlessly outspread
            Their lone waters—lone and dead,
            Their still waters—still and chilly
            With the snows of the lolling lily.

            By the lakes that thus outspread
            Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
            Their sad waters, sad and chilly
            With the snows of the lolling lily,—
            By the mountains—near the river
            Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
            By the grey woods,—by the swamp
            Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
            By the dismal tarns and pools
                    Where dwell the Ghouls,—
            By each spot the most unholy—
            In each nook most melancholy,—
            There the traveller meets aghast
            Sheeted Memories of the Past—
            Shrouded forms that start and sigh
            As they pass the wanderer by—
            White-robed forms of friends long given,
            In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.

            For the heart whose woes are legion
            ’Tis a peaceful, soothing region—
            For the spirit that walks in shadow
            ’Tis—oh ’tis an Eldorado!
            But the traveller, travelling through it,
            May not—dare not openly view it;
            Never its mysteries are exposed
            To the weak human eye unclosed;
            So wills its King, who hath forbid
            The uplifting of the fringed lid;
            And thus the sad Soul that here passes
            Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

            By a route obscure and lonely,
            Haunted by ill angels only,
            Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
            On a black throne reigns upright,
            I have wandered home but newly
            From this ultimate dim Thule.