So on his Nɪɢʜᴛᴍᴀʀᴇ through the evening fogFlits the squab Fiend o’er fen, and lake, and bog;Seeks some love-wilder’d Maid with sleep oppress’d,Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.—Such as of late amid the murky skyWas mark’d by Fᴜsᴇʟɪ’s poetic eye;Whose daring tints, with Sʜᴀᴋᴇsᴘᴇᴀʀ’s happiest grace,Gave to the airy phantom form and place.—Back o’er her pillow sinks her blushing head,Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed;While with quick sighs, and suffocative breath,Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death.—Then shrieks of captured towns, and widows’ tears,Pale lovers stretch’d upon their blood-stain’d biers,The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight,The trackless desert, the cold starless night,And stern-eye’d Murder with his knife behind,In dread succession agonize her mind.O’er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet,Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet;In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries,And strains in palsy’d lids her tremulous eyes;In vain she wills to run, fly, swim, walk, creep;The Wɪʟʟ presides not in the bower of Sʟᴇᴇᴘ.—On her fair bosom sits the Demon-ApeErect, and balances his bloated shape;Rolls in their marble orbs his Gorgon-eyes,And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries.