Here the snakes whose venom healeth
Stand in jars in hideous file;
While the skulls that crown the book-shelves
Seem to grin; and from the ceiling
Hangs the huge stuffed crocodile.
Here be kept the drugs and cordials
Which the Jew from Syria brings,
And perchance drugs yet more precious,
Melted topaz, pounded ruby
Such as save the lives of kings.
All is silent in the study;
But the door-hinge creaks anon,
And a woman enters softly
Seeking something that seems hidden—
One unnaturally wan.
What she seeks is not in phials
Nor in jars, but in a book;
And she mutters as she searches
Through the book-shelves with a kind of
Brooding hurry in her look;
And she finds the book, and takes it
To the window for more light;
And she reads a passage slowly
With constrained and hissing breathing
And dark brow contracted tight.
“Most of them,” it says, “are corpses
That have lain beneath the moon,
And that quit their graves at midnight,
Prowling round to prey on sleepers;
But the daybreak scares them soon.
“But the worst, called soulless bodies,
Plague the world but now and then;
They have died in some great sickness;
But reviving in the moonbeams
Rise once more and mix with men.
“And they act and feel like others,
Never guessing they be dead,
Common food of men they love not;
But at night, impelled by hunger,
In their sleep they quit their bed;
“And they fasten on some sleeper,
Feeding on his living blood;
Who, when life has left his body,
Must in turn arise, and, prowling,
Seek the like accursed food.”
And the book slips from her fingers
And she casts her down to pray;
But convulsions seize and twist her,
And delirious ramblings mingle
With the prayers she tries to say.