The Midnight Hour

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, then 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;
as morose moans — those mournful groans — he'd longed to ne'er know.
A spectral mist wrapped 'round his wrist and held his hand in check,
his pen soon halted, his mind—assaulted; he held on by a speck.

 
Closed coffins groaned, just as they moaned, ripe rotting bodies moved.
Hell's minions can't express opinions; all 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 danced on the wooden floor,
her hell-spawn followed —he just 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 – was so 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!
For in God's name I thus proclaim, I'm forever freed from you.
Back to your graves, you wretched knaves. I care not what you do.”

 
She squalled in fear yet disappeared, as quickly as she came.
Her minions followed, in pain, they wallowed, whilst he rebuked her name.
Thus a poet, with words to show it, was born by monstrous woe,
whose poems today ne'er fade away — one Edgar Allan Poe.