This medieval knight (the legend saith)
For months would scarcely draw a sober breath;
But as his appetite grew more and more
Drank each day worse than on the day before;
Was drunk all night, all day continued so,
Indulged in every vice he chanced to know. 
But long debauch and riotous excess
Reduce their strongest votaries to distress;
When nature can the strain no longer stand
She chastens with a sure and irate hand,
So when the day of reckoning had come,
She smote with fever and delirium
This valiant knight whom we have tried to paint;
A very slim foundation for a saint!

The crisis reached, his fever stricken brain
Surrendered reason to excessive pain;
Nor moment’s respite, comatose and kind,
Relieved the raging furnace of his mind;
And gruesome spectres, awful and unreal,
Through his disordered vagaries would steal;
When last his scorching temples sought repose
In hasty nap or intermittent doze,
His eyes beheld, though starting from his head,
A grizzly figure leaning o’er his bed,
With aspect foul beyond descriptive word,
As one for months in sepulchre interred,
Restored again to animated breath,
A weird composite type of life and death;
With countenance most hideous and vile,
Leering with ghastly and unearthly smile;
Pointing its shriveled finger, as in scorn,
Of mockery and accusation born.

As he beheld in terror and surprise
This gruesome shape which mocked before his eyes
He could distinguish in its haughty mien
A bearing, something as his own had been;
Nor had its withered visage quite the look
Of vampire, ghoul or evanescent spook;
And as the apparition o’er him bent,
He saw that every seam or lineament,
Contour of feature, prominence of bone,
Bore all a striking semblance to his own.

The horror stricken knight essayed to speak,
But words responded tremulous and weak,
And mustering his dissipated strength,
A sitting posture he assumed at length,—­
“Whate’er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom,
Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb,
Thou vampire, diabolical and fell,
Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell,
I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess
Why thou hast thus disturbed my sore distress. 
Why hast thou burst my chamber’s bolted door
Where guest unbidden never trod before? 
Break this suspense, so horrible and still! 
Declare thy tidings, be they good or ill,
Be thou from Heaven or from the realms below. 
I charge thee speak, be thou a friend or foe;
Break thou thy silence, ominous and deep,
Or hence!  Pursue thy way and let me sleep!”