All night long we had heard the voice of the Sea
Roaming the corridors.
Across the worn and hollow floors
There went a ghostly tread incessantly.
The walls of our old inn,
By windy winters eaten grey and thin,
Trembled and shook, the wild night long,
With resonant, vague, hoarse-throated song
Like a storm-strung violin.

All night we heard vast forces throng
To onset in the dark, indomitably strong,
An army under sable banners flying.
And then, above the din
Of far wild voices crying
And farther, wilder voices dreadfully replying,
Slowly, far down the unseen mysterious shore,
With fearful sibilance and long unintermittent roar,
We heard another, mightier tide begin!

Then our hearts shook, there on the world's wide rim
Fronting eternity and neighboring the Abyss.
Had we not cowered all night from the face of Him,
The King of Terrors, from the coil and hiss
Of the pale snakes of death
Writhing about our very door?
Had we not borne his clammy breath
Upon our hair
Nightlong, and his stealthy footstep on the stair,
His vast voice everywhere?
Had not each echoing wall and hollow floor,
Worn by his winds so grey and spectre-thin,
Resounded like the shell of a fragile violin
That screams once at its death and never more?
Had He not homage of our fear enough before
He sent this last dark cohort crashing in?