Read "The Vampire" by Madison Cawein online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
/ A lily in a twilight place? / A moonflow'r in the lonely night? -- / Strange beauty of a woman's face / Of wildflow'r-white!
/ The rain that hangs a star's green ray / Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness, / Is not so glimmering green and gray / As was her dress.
/ I drew her dark hair from her eyes, / And in their deeps beheld a while / Such shadowy moonlight as the skies / Of Hell may smile.
/ She held her mouth up redly wan, / And burning cold, -- I bent and kissed / Such rosy snow as some wild dawn / Makes of a mist.
/ God shall not take from me that hour, / When round my neck her white arms clung! / When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower, / Her white throat swung!
/ Or words she murmured while she leaned! / Witch-words, she holds me softly by, -- / The spell that binds me to a fiend / Until I die.