free-verse62 lines

Ode, To Horror

by Thomas Oldham

I felt thee, Horror! rush upon my soul,

Thy hideous band my frighted fancy saw;

Spare me, O spare me! cease thy dire controul,

And let my trembling hand the vision draw.

Lo! what terrific Forms around thee wait,

The monstrous births abhorr'd of Mind and Fate!

Murder, with blood of innocence defiled;

Despair, deep-groaning; Madness screaming wild;

Mid clouds of smoke, the fire-eyed Fury, War,

Through gore and mangled flesh whirl'd in her thundering car;

Plague, sallow Hag! who arms her breath

With thousand viewless darts of death;

And Earthquake, image of the final doom,

That, bursting fierce his anguish'd mother's womb,

Whelms nations in the yawning jaws of night,

And palsies mighty Nature with affright.

Amid that direful band

I see thee, Horror! stand,

With bloodless visage, terror-frozen stare,

Distorted, ice-bound limbs, and bristling hair,

Thy shivering lips bereft of speech and breath,

In monstrous union life combined with death.

I see thee still, O Horror! and in thee

Methinks an image of myself I see;

For, while I gaze with fear-fixed sight,

O Horror! thy Gorgonian might

Turns me to stone: dread tyrant, O forbear!

To view thee I no longer dare.

I feel my throbbing heart respire.

Again my fancy with unquell'd desire,

O Horror! courts thee, trembling owns thy power.

Come, let us now, at this congenial hour,

While midnight tempests sweep

With bellowing rage the ship-ingulfing deep,

While thunders roar, and livid lightnings blaze,

Let us on that dread, watery chaos gaze.

Or from the peopled vale, below,

Uplooking, see, from lofty Alpine crown,

The rolling mass of snow,

Into a mountain grown,

Rush overwhelming down.

Or let us, in Numidian desert drear,

The roar of prowling beasts, and hiss of serpents hear;

Or bask by blazing city; or explore,

On Etna's brink, the sulphurous mouth of hell,

And hear the fiery flood tempestuous roar,

And hear the damn'd in hotter torments yell.

Or wilt thou, Horror! haunt the villain's breast,

In dismal solitude, by thought opprest;

Where guilty Conscience fetter'd lies,

Turn'd all her shrinking lidless eyes

Full to the blaze of truth's unclouded sun,

And struggles, still in vain, her pangs, herself to shun?

Ah! now more hideous grows thine air;

With direr aspect ne'er dost thou appear,

To fright weak Beings in this earthly sphere;

Faint semblance of thy most tremendous mien,

As, in Tartarean gulfs of endless night,

By agonizing demons thou art seen:

But oh! what living eye could bear that sight?

To look on it e'en Fancy does not dare.

Oh! may I ne'er be doom'd to see thee, Horror! there!