He winds his arms about her and sinks with his prey through the yawning ground; and

    “At midnight four times in each year does her sprite,
      When mortals in slumber are bound. 
    Arrayed in her bridal apparel of white,
    Appear in the hall with a skeleton knight
      And shriek as he whirls her around.

    “While they drink out of skulls newly torn from the grave,
      Dancing round them pale spectres are seen. 
    Their liquor is blood, and this horrible stave
    They how:  ’To the health of Alonzo the Brave
      And his consort, the Fair Imogene!’”

Lewis’ own contributions to his “Tales of Terror” and “Tales of Wonder,” were of his same raw-head and bloody-bones variety.  His imagination rioted in physical horrors.  There are demons who gnash with iron fangs and brandish gore-fed scorpions; maidens are carried off by the Winter King, the Water King, the Cloud King, and the Sprite of the Glen; they are poisoned or otherwise done to death, and their wraiths revisit their guilty lovers in their shrouds at midnight’s dark hour and imprint clammy kisses upon them with livid lips; gray friars and black canons abound; requiem and death knell sound through the gloom of the cloisters; echo roars through high Gothic arches; the anchorite mutters in his mossy cell; tapers burn dim, torches cast a red glare on vaulted roofs; the night wind blows through dark aisles; the owl hoots in the turret, and dying groans are heard in the lonely house upon the heath, where the black and tattered arras molders on the wall.

The “Tales of Wonder” included translations by Lewis from Goethe’s “Fisher” and “Erl-King,” and from German versions of Runic ballads in Herder’s “Stimmen der Voelker.”  Scott’s “Wild Huntsman,” from Buerger, was here reprinted, and he contributed, in addition, “Frederick and Alice,” paraphrased from a romance-fragment in Goethe’s opera “Claudina von Villa Bella”; and three striking ballads of his own, “The Fire King,” a story of the Crusades, and “Glenfinlas” and “The Eve of St. John,” Scottish tales of “gramarye.”  There were two or three old English ballads in the collection, such as “Clerk Colvin” and “Tam Lin”; a contribution from George Colman, Jr., the dramatist, and one from Scott’s eccentric friend Leyden; and the volume concluded with Taylor’s “Lenora."[37]

It is comical to read that the Monk gave Scott lectures in the art of versification and corrected the Scotticisms and false rhymes in his translations from Buerger; and that Scott respectfully deferred to his advice.  For nothing can be in finer contrast with Lewis’ penny dreadful, than the martial ring of the verse and the manly vigor of the style in Scott’s part of the book.  This is how Lewis writes anapaests, e.g.: 

    “All shrouded she was in the garb of the tomb,
      Her lips they were livid, her face it was wan;
    A death the most horrid had rifled her bloom
      And each charm of beauty was faded and gone.”