| I recall that awful feeling
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| Of growing horror, as from my ceiling
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| Dripped noxious fluids which filled my room
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| With a singular odor, a foetid fume
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| Which should have served to warn me well
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| That in the room above did dwell
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| A fearful thing
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| Yet I required the Doctor’s care
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| I clambered up the creaking stair
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| To the sepulcher wherein survived
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| His deathless mind, a thing which thrived
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| In the cool air, in the frigid tomb
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| Twas Death he fought in that Stygian gloom
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| Night after night I would visit there
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| Regardless of the freezing air
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| A nameless fear within me grew
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| For his bloodless hands and ghoulish hue
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| Were more than an anxious mind could bare
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| In this laboratory with its cool air
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| My host though odd was not unkind
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| And he told me how the will, the mind
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| Was stronger than organic life
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| His enemy, Death, and with Death his strife
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| He raved then of outlandish schemes
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| Of sorcerous rites, unholy dreams
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| Where the Daemons howl, dark planets roll
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| Through a universe both lifeless and cold
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| Of blasphemy he took no heed
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| As arcane rites became his creed
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| As noxious vapours 'round him rolled
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| While curious engines pumped the cold
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| He thrived within the cool air
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| Noisome machines and bubbling vials
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| Were but scientific trials
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| Or so he claimed, but then I knew
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| And thus the dread within me grew
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| Night after night I would visit there
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| Regardless of the freezing air
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| Cold as death it leached my will
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| I lost my mind in the morbid chill
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| But death must come to claim us all
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| He had not seen the fatal flaw
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| It failed at last, that damned device
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| That machine which kept his room like ice
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| He thrived within the cool air
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| This won’t suffice
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| Bring ice bring ice
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| His tomb, his lair
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| Must have cool air
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| He uttered then a piteous cry
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| He begged for ice as though he’d die
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| Without its chill, so ice I brought
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| Yet this was death with which we fought
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| The air grew warm and stifling hot
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| And as he melted into rot
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| That hollow voice I’d come to fear
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| Whispered fell into my ear
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| A thing I cannot bear, and yet
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| I laughed as if I could forget
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| I laughed as only the mad can do
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| And then I shrieked for then I knew
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| He spoke the thing which confirmed my fears
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| «I have been dead for eighteen years»
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| I can’t abide the cool air
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| I can’t abide the cool air… |