Woodchester Manor Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

I sailed long enough upon the ocean,
Too bitter to sip, the brine was always cold.
I witnessed my ship descend in the old,
Fierce Atlantic, with a desperate emotion.

In two days time
I awoke on the English shore
Not knowing how I survived the wreck.
And of my mates
From the baleful and torrid, grim effect
Of the billows' violent crime
There remained no more.

I began a course eastward on a splendid steed
Traveling over hills and glades.
I was guided by my orphic dreams
Where holly green hills met purple shades
Where many rustic, azure streams
Seemed to befriend me
As they gratefully did lead
My horse and I from the swallowing sea.

Suddenly it came to my awareness
That the ancient, English sun had met the night
And my gelding quivered as the moon did rise
Over the carmine colored, British skies.

So having to harness
My equestrian might,
I slept near Bath, in a piney wood.
Bats circled my psyche, and doing what I could,
I did not wait for dawn to ascend.
So beside a mound where the grasses did bend
Beneath the firmament, flushed with every cloud,
I soon found myself near the town of Shroud,
In a place called Staple Hill.
I ventured forth
Over lush, emerald glades of the daffodil.

And going further north
I approached a Gothic manor, massive and old
Where no lights were to be seen in its many windows,
Where no breezes stirred its ponds where no water flows.
I heard in that darkness only the din
Of the moaning, wintry cold
Which appeared to have an eternal hold
On the gruesome loneliness which I could see lied within.

No warmth was to be had in the forest outside,
So tying up my steed, I approached the main gate
Of the ancient mansion where the sun, too late
No longer shown there
Where
A tangible mystery did indeed reside.

My footsteps rang heavily on the gray marble floor,
As I passed over the threshold beyond the old, oak door.
The foyer was vast,
And after so many years
Only the past
Claimed all my fears.
And all of those souls whom I loved and love still
Beset me with a nebulous thrill
Like a throng of ghosts
Unseen, but there.

Phantom like hosts
Seemed to move through the air
Descending down a staircase where
Dreadful candles upheld by no hands
Resembled Satan's contrabands.

And finally reaching the upper floor,
I noticed the plaster upon the walls
Bled like spirits damned in the halls.
Then I slowly opened a solitary door. -

And within that chamber in terror I did see
The woman that once did marry me.
And in my horror knowing that she was dead,
I heard her speak in my state of dread:
"Mark me well,
You have indeed entered hell! "

And only the night heard the words she said.