---
title: "Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d…"
date: 2021-03-23
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
---

# Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, Past the wan-moon’d…

*March 23, 2021 · Facebook*

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[![YouTube video](img/2021-03-23-fb-002-yt01.webp){style="max-width:100%; display:block"}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp2IuT-cgHc){rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"}

▶ Watch on YouTube
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Thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,\
Past the wan-moon'd abysses of night,\
I have liv'd o'er my lives without number,\
I have sounded all things with my sight;\
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.\
\
I have whirl'd with the earth at the dawning,\
When the sky was a vaporous flame;\
I have seen the dark universe yawning,\
Where the black planets roll without aim;\
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.\
\
I had drifted o'er seas without ending,\
Under sinister grey-clouded skies\
That the many-fork'd lightning is rending,\
That resound with hysterical cries;\
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.\
\
I have plung'd like a deer thro' the arches\
Of the hoary primordial grove,\
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches\
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;\
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro' dead branches above.\
\
I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains\
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,\
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains\
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;\
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.\
\
I have scann'd the vast ivy-clad palace,\
I have trod its untenanted hall,\
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys\
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;\
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.\
\
I have peer'd from the casement in wonder\
At the mouldering meadows around,\
At the many-roof'd village laid under\
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;\
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.\
\
I have haunted the tombs of the ages,\
I have flown on the pinions of fear\
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,\
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:\
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.\
\
I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted\
The jewel-deck'd throne by the Nile;\
I was old in those epochs uncounted\
When I, and I only, was vile;\
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.\
\
Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,\
And great is the reach of its doom;\
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,\
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:\
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.\
\
Thro' the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,\
Past the wan-moon'd abysses of night,\
I have liv'd o'er my lives without number,\
I have sounded all things with my sight;\
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.\
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[![YouTube video](img/2021-03-23-fb-002-yt02.webp){style="max-width:100%; display:block"}](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp2IuT-cgHc){rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"}

▶ Watch on YouTube
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