Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into the seas without a shore; that aspire,, unto the skies of fire;
By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,- By the grey woods,- by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp- There the traveler meets aghast Sheeted Memories of the Past- Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by-
By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule- From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, Out of space- out of time.
But the traveler, 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 reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule- From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, Out of space out of time.