Bale-Terrors
On a dark and stormy night when a gale was rising high,
I was walking in the forest and thought I heard a cry;
muffled by the distance to a sound like mournful sigh,
it rose above the wind, then wavered, faltered, died,
so light upon the ear I almost could have thought
it was a trick of sound by storm and gale-wind wrought.
What could that whisper be? Sense and query fought,
but puzzle over-balanced, so sense I heeded not:
I rushed into the darkness of the wind and rain and cold.
The lightning flashed and glamored on a castle ruined of old
and there, like sheep who stray from the devil's fallen fold,
there walked in shadowed night the terrors, bale and bold,
who turned the rain to ice with malice in their breath --
their eyes looked chill upon me, and I met my freezing death.
