“…Deep dread and loathing of her solitude
Fell on her, from which mood was born
Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood
Laughter at her self-scorn.

“What! is not this my place of strength,” she said,
“My spacious mansion built for me,
Whereof the strong foundation-stones were laid
Since my first memory.”

But in dark corners of her palace stood
uncertain shapes; and unawares
On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood,
And horrible nightmares,

And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame,
And, with dim fretted foreheads all,
On corpses three-months-old at noon she came,
That stood against the wall…”

– Excerpt of The Palace of Art by Alfred Lord Tennyson from A dream of fair women, and other poems, by 1900.  Illustration by Edmund J. Sullivan.

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Categories: Poetry and Prose, Projects

Tags: engravings, etchings, halloween, Halloween poetry, poetry, Romanticism, turn of the century