Once upon a midnight sordid, while I dig a gravesite swarded,
Questing for my muse of morbid madness born from lurid lore—
While I shovel, nearly dying, suddenly there comes a sighing,
As of someone softly crying, crying muffled tears of horror.
“’Tis the graveyard wind,” I mutter, “crying muffled tears of horror—”
Yet I hope ’tis something more.
With my spade I shovel deeper, searching for my cloistered sleeper,
Fighting tirelessly to keep her from a soil-infested horror,
Lo! I spy a dampened wrapping—winding-sheets so cruelly trapping,
Trapping in the earth a spirit unlike any known before,
“Let it be the one I buried; let me view her!” I implore—
“Let me view the lost Lenore.”
Like a Lord of Necromancy, I’ll exhume my fiendish fancy,
Dearest parents and Aunt Nancy, do not rap upon my door,
For you’ll find the son you banished—poet Poe, the one who vanished,
Drinking dreams within the arms of his Lenore, forevermore—
Yes, delirious with dreams; it seems my life you shall abhor.
I belong to you no more.
Did my eye just spy a quiver? A small twitch—a shud’ring shiver?
A meek movement not yet noticed in the winding-sheet before?
Look! The shrouded head starts shaking, dust and dirt around her quaking,
Yes! She writhes, her silence breaking; with my hands I dig some more—
“Let us, Garland, free my spirit from this stark and stifling store,
And the three of us shall soar.”
I crouch down and sever wrappings, rip apart those ghoulish trappings,
Ignore time’s incessant lapping, while I rush to save Lenore.
Yet, I fear what I may find here; “Do not think me too unkind, dear—
But I worry Death has marred you with his vile, postmortem gore,
Yes, I worry, but I’ll care for you like no one’s cared before.”
Lenore caws, and nothing more.
I untie a crucial binding, still I dread what I am finding,
The cessation of unwinding reveals the figure’s not Lenore!
But a feathered, sable creature (shadows cloak its every feature),
A ravened version of the spirit who bewitched me years before—
Not a maid with raven feathers, but a muse of ancient lore,
A wing’d muse of ancient lore.
“Please forgive me, I implore you. Please,” I beg her, “I adore you!”
The raven spreads her ebon wings, and I fall back and watch her soar;
She escapes that earthen hollow, turns her head for me to follow,
So, I claw, and climb, and swallow all my pride from days of yore,
Yes, I join the radiant maiden whom I named for light: Lenore—
My dark muse—forevermore.