The storm comes slowly up the skies. 
The valley in its shadow lies,
Yet still a light as faint as hope 
Lies all along the sheep-trimmed slope 
And fain would save the distant tower 
From darkness yet another hour,
But vainly from the tempest flies. 

The herons from the marsh have gone, 
Beholding how the dark draws on. 
The beech-tree yonder on the hill,
Where silly sheep are feeding still, 
'Twixt light and lightning shuddering stands, 
A landmark between alien lands — 
Each leaf aghast in the hot breath 
That whispers to all trees of death. 

The sheep feed stolidly, nor know 
How near their heads the lightnings go. 
The old tower not more careless stands 
Of human wrath and human hands 
Than these meek things that without fear 
The lightnings see, the thunders hear,
Nor cease from feeding to and fro.

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset's gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind blows through the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power
Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne,
And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain
That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
Sprung out of the tomb's black maw
To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
Shall some day be with the rest,
And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemures bark,
And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
Of horror and death are penned,
For the hounds of Time to rend.