Lost Soul

From far across the desolate moor I heard The echo of a wild and anguished cry— A tortured voice that shrieked aloud a word, A name, that shivered 'cross the leaden sky. I stopped—stared 'round—I knew that voice did sound A faint, familiar note within my brain. I fled across that dark and desolate ground Seeking out the direction whence it came. Forebodingly, that voice kept echoing Within a brain that did not seem my own ... A vague remembrance of a recent thing I could not grasp ... I was a lost and lone Forsaken soul that sped I knew not where, Wondering frightenedly what I did seek.... At last I found it, there beside a bare And lonely road, when trembling and weak, I gazed upon a gallows-tree where hung A corpse, the very site of which did freeze The blood within my veins; a corpse that swung Grotesquely to and fro upon the breeze. And then, through rising panic, closer still I peered—then saw!—and knew! Again that cry That shrieked a name—the cry that issued shrill From my own throat, and shivered to the sky! * * * * * The name I shriek beneath the gallows-tree Was mine. The dead thing swinging there was me!