Despair Lyrics

O’er the midnight moorlands crying

Thro’ the cypress forests sighing

In the night-wind madly flying

Hellish forms with streaming hair

In the barren branches creaking

By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking

Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking

Damn’d daemons of despair

Once, I think I half remember

Ere the grey skies of November

Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember

Liv’d there such a thing as bliss

Skies that now are dark were beaming

Gold and azure, splendid seeming

Till I learn’d it all was dreaming

Deadly drowsiness of Dis

But the stream of Time, swift flowing

Brings the torment of half-knowing

Dimly rushing, blindly going

Past the never-trodden lea

And the voyager, repining

Sees the wicked death-fires shining

Hears the wicked petrel’s whining

As he helpless drifts to sea

Evil wings in ether beating

Vultures at the spirit eating

Things unseen forever fleeting

Black against the leering sky

Ghastly shades of bygone gladness

Clawing fiends of future sadness

Mingle in a cloud of madness

Ever on the soul to lie

Thus the living, lone and sobbing

In the throes of anguish throbbing

With the loathsome Furies robbing

Night and noon of peace and rest

But beyond the groans and grating

Of abhorrent Life, is waiting

Sweet Oblivion, culminating

All the years of fruitless quest