Mouldy Damps, Ropy Slime – Robert Blair’s The Grave

The Grave, dread thing!
Men shiver when thou’rt named: Nature appall’d
Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah! how dark
Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes!
Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night,
Dark as was chaos, ere the infant Sun
Was roll’d together, or had tried his beams
Athwart the gloom profound.—The sickly taper,
By glimmering through thy low-brow’d misty vaults
(Furr’d round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime),
Lets fall a supernumerary horror,
And only serves to make thy night more irksome.