So on his Nɪɢʜᴛᴍᴀʀᴇ through the evening fog Flits the squab Fiend o’er fen, and lake, and bog; Seeks some love-wilder’d Maid with sleep oppress’d, Al… - Erasmus Darwin

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So on his Nɪɢʜᴛᴍᴀʀᴇ through the evening fog
Flits the squab Fiend o’er fen, and lake, and bog;
Seeks some love-wilder’d Maid with sleep oppress’d,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.
—Such as of late amid the murky sky
Was mark’d by Fᴜsᴇʟɪ’s poetic eye;
Whose daring tints, with Sʜᴀᴋᴇsᴘᴇᴀʀ’s happiest grace,
Gave to the airy phantom form and place.—
Back o’er her pillow sinks her blushing head,
Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed;
While with quick sighs, and suffocative breath,
Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death.
—Then shrieks of captured towns, and widows’ tears,
Pale lovers stretch’d upon their blood-stain’d biers,
The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight,
The trackless desert, the cold starless night,
And stern-eye’d Murder with his knife behind,
In dread succession agonize her mind.
O’er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet,
Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet;
In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries,
And strains in palsy’d lids her tremulous eyes;
In vain she wills to run, fly, swim, walk, creep;
The Wɪʟʟ presides not in the bower of Sʟᴇᴇᴘ.
—On her fair bosom sits the Demon-Ape
Erect, and balances his bloated shape;
Rolls in their marble orbs his Gorgon-eyes,
And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries.