These are the Winter's withered days
whose brilliance fast descending,
Lies, in state, in ashen greys
enhanced by daylight's ending.
Today is drear dark and cold in the bark
as my mind clings to vestigial reason;
My life's bloods decreased and my soul near deceased
in the dead of the grim Winter season.
The ground is inured by the winter endured,
too cold to comfortably die on,
Where steel-grey clouds grow threatening snow
nbsp; mid this realm of the Boreal Lion.
Where skeletal trees of barren mein
with outstretched limbs abiding,
In seas of mist stand half unseen
where creeping things are hiding.
All the air is bitterly dense
and chills with the sun's declining,
And, cold is the indurate earth that lies
beneath that misty lining.
I walk this haunted nether land
mid spectres fleet and darting,
Amorphous figures bolder grown
with daylight fast departing.
Beneath my feet uneven ground
encumbers ambulation,
As though alive, the gelid earth
secrets debilitation.
Protruding through these dankly dense
unyielding Stygian waves,
The tops of lurid tombstones loom
above forgotten graves.
Ah! This is the wretched churchyard;
a grim configuration,
Bounding a vast unfortunate lot
who should have sought cremation.
Assorted markers, crossed and etched
in grey low mist assume,
A gaunt grey granite garden round
about some ancient tomb.
The Late, interred, are laid to rest
among their silent peers,
Indifferent, all, to name or rank
or qualitative years.
But, there they lie these sons of men
each framed by stone and mound,
Forever still, forever mute
in consecrated ground.
No sign of relief . . . no end to my grief
no promise of hoped liberation;
Just constant distress in the abyss of my breast
and the pain of my fate's flagellation.
Unbending binding, the elements aligning
grant not an iota of giving;
A respite from grief, or a mote of relief
to educe any reason for living.
But, drugged near insane with Fate as the ban
in the catalytic caustic libation,
Forced down my throat while dark demons did gloat
at the withholding of God's liberation.
My pace is palsied, slow and pained
and, Death more bold and fleet,
Creeps mutely within the opaque veil
that lies about my feet.
Near and far no more define
no path, nor know direction;
To take me past those long asleep,
awaiting resurrection.
For, I had sought by the hour the vast hidden power
in rare known tomes of arcane lore,
And wrought up dread, the darkest hour
a soul of man has ever bore.
Great mystic gates! That terror awaits?
What mountainous miseries hover?
What torturous terror was sent by my error?
I fear I soon may discover!
For words near to babbling, for mystical dabbling,
I'm cursed to suffer damnation,
Oh! Rueful the day I wandered this way
and muttered that bleak incantation.
There are demons, grim spirits, seeking my blood
for unholiest covenants made;
Now! On this night, comes the ultimate fright
for the Reaper readies his blade.
With the sun descended, my last day near ended
I'll wait with nowhere to hide,
For it's here that I'll stay, and my tombstone shall say:
He conjured! He dabbled! He died!