| A black carriage rushing through the mountains of Carpathia.
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| The only passenger — the main character of this drama.
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| Titan wood and haunted hill, vales in which the wolf doth kill…
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| Wisps that in the morass glow mounts with diadems of snow…
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| Fog that swirls o’er moor and heath, the tawny owl sings from the trees…
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| From the ponds the old toad calls, this is where our drapery falls…
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| Eight hooves that pound the midnight groove…
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| Over stock and stone a carriage that winds upward the mountain pass,
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| deep into the wild.
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| Crushing stone and shatt’ring bough under wooden wheel and moonlight breaks in
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| spruce and fir and paints the night unreal.
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| With ruthless hand and turbid eyes the coachman drives his brute that snarls
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| and sniffs but rushes on to escape that spook…
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| Six hours as the raven flies — still — to acquinted land…
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| Six hours till the sun wiil rise and morning shall ascent.
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| — Sleep my dear, don’t bother thee with the idle talk of curse and evil blood
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| that runeth in thy veins…
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| — In the cabin lies asleep unblessed by fevered dreams, traveller on his way
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| home towards the sun’s first beams… |