Mania-a-Potu

I see a sight you can not see;
     I hear a sound you can not hear;
The visions that are haunting me
     Are dreadful, dreadful—dreadful queer!
O gracious Heaven! can such things be, 
     And mortal man sustain their shocks?
Take off my wig! these terrors free 
     All its combined and matted locks!

A green-eyed viper's crackling scales
     Are currying my naked scalp;
And up my back creep myriad snails
     To poultice it with their green pulp!
Three demons with their barbed tails,
     Three snaky imps of Beelzebub, 
Are threshing me, as these were flails,
     And they had taken me by the job!

Look, on the top of that tall rye 
     Seven cows go, and it does not bend—
Seven stump-tailed ghosts of them that die 
     On whisky-slops—0 Heaven, forefen !
I've seen before a great horse-fly, 
     And cow-birds; but this kind of kine 
Are spirit-cows that never dry!
     Their milk filled this brown jug of mine.

Whew! what a flock of four-winged bats,
     With five steel claws on every wing!
Hurrah! toss up your crownless hats, 
     They'll chase 'em in a spiral ring.
Out, monstrous king of all black cats!
     I'm not a rat! what munch ye here?
These shanks are Smith's, and surely that's 
     Old Jones's muzzle, of the Revere!

Pah! how they wriggle, twist, and hiss !
     Crawl! crawl! d'ye stuff your bed with snakes
Compared with such a bed as this
     Live geese-feathers were dead as stakes.
And so, old Bones, you thought you'd kiss 
     This hot mouth, eh? Grim skeleton!
It cracks your gumless teeth! I wis 
     Another time you'll let me alone!

Do I look green, you great black horse?
     Well, graze away, my toes will sprout!
But, when you come to touch that corse 
     I died in, you had best look out!
It's dancing with demoniac force
     Over the ruined soul I seem,
And one great adder, named Remorse, 
     Calls off the figure with a scream!

Lend me a spade—-no, not the ace!
     "A spade, a pickax, and a hoe;" 
I want to dig my burial-place,
     The worms are gnawing at me so!
Are all these jugs, with legs and face, 
     My mourners? Hold, you leering imps!
I want a drink, red-hot, to chase
     The fiend that through my raw brain limps!

You lie! thin spectre of a form 
     That hovered o'er my cradle-bed;
Self-burning makes my stark flesh warm,
     The last bell tolls, and I am dead!
"Repent?" Ay, let them whose life-term
     Is unexpired. "The pledge! the pledge?"
Its golden bow illumes the storm,
     Just o'er the dreadful doom-gulf's edge.

But I am falling! falling! falling!
     I hear the everlasting shriek
Of souls in hopeless horror calling
     For "Help! help! help!" they can not seek
Down, through the darkness ever thicker,
     In whirls I meet the red gulf's boiling, 
And splash the fires to one wild flicker, 
     The lurid spray of hell's recoiling!

Is that you, wife, so scared and dumb, 
     Yet ever watchful, ever tender?
Dear, drag me out that jug of rum 
     And knock its skull in on the fender.
There! Dreams have made my head ache some;
     But hold it so, I'll soon be better.
Sweet! there are happy days to come— 
     This hour forever breaks my fetter!