3.
A great church in an empty square,
A place of echoing tones;
Feet pass not oft enough to wear
The grass between the stones.
The jarring sounds that haunt its gates,
Like distant thunders boom;
The boding heart half-listening waits,
As for a coming doom.
The door stands wide, the church is bare,
Oh, horror, ghastly, sore!
A gulf of death, with hideous stare,
Yawns in the earthen floor;
As if the ground had sunk away
Into a void below:
Its shapeless sides of dark-hued clay
Hang ready aye to go.
I am myself a horrid grave,
My very heart turns grey;
This charnel-hole,—will no one save
And force my feet away?
The changing dead are there, I know,
In terror ever new;
Yet down the frightful slope I go,
That downward goeth too.
Beneath the caverned floor I hie,
And seem, with anguish dull,
To enter by the empty eye
Into a monstrous skull.
Stumbling on what I dare not guess,
And wading through the gloom,
Less deep the shades my eyes oppress,
I see the awful tomb.
My steps have led me to a door,
With iron clenched and barred;
Grim Death hides there a ghastlier store,
Great spider in his ward.