The Midnight Hour
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The lamplight burned into the night, his face was wracked by yawns.
Try as he might to get it right, he knew, soon came the dawn.
White wolf in murky moonlight's glow now howled upon the lawn,
he heard the sigh, knew time was nigh; it's song, so woebegone.
His maiden fair, whose baleful stare, would find him, soon enough.
The spell she cast, 'twas not her last — he gazed out o'er the bluff.
Outside the crumbling mortared walls, betwixt the naked trees,
crept through thin cracks, climbed up his back, soon came the chilling breeze.
The midnight hour was close at hand, still on and on, he wrote.
Time and again the poet's pen upon white paper smote.
Each word was laced by one embraced by forces none could see.
He shut his eyes just as her cries bespoke her ghastly spree.
He felt fear's quake as rusty gates creaked open, down below;
miserable moans — mournful groans — he'd so longed ne'er to know.
A spectral mist wrapped 'round his wrist and held his hand in check,
his pen was halted, his mind, assaulted; he held on by a speck.
Closed coffins groaned, just as they moaned, the rotting bodies moved,
Hell's minions can't express opinions, their will has been removed.
She led them straight through rusty gates, up to his room, with ease,
she surely knew, as blood lust grew, her thirst must be appeased.
When nearly there, in dire despair; he felt their presence close.
Of all Hell's spawn she would bring on, he feared her wrath the most.
Before the bright soft candlelight was snuffed out by the breeze,
he'd finished it, now words were writ, to stop her dreadful pleas.
She entered in, a vaporous spin upon the wooden floor,
hellspawn followed —hard he swallowed, as soon came many more.
Would blood suffice, his sole device, 'twas used to pen the words?
He'd worked so hard – this noble bard – he was drained afterwards...
“Lenore, my dear, please go from here, although I loved you once,
take all the dead back to their bed, leave me, you abhorrence!
In God's name I thus proclaim, I be forever freed from you.
Back to your graves, you wretched knaves. I care not what you do.”
She squalled in fear, but disappeared, as quickly as she came,
minions followed, in pain, wallowed, whilst he rebuked her name.
Thus a poet, with words to show it, was born by monstrous woe,
whose poems today won't fade away — one Edgar Allan Poe.
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