“Some twenty years, I think, are gone
    (Time flies, I know not how, away),
  The sun upon no happier shone
    Nor prouder man, than Eustace Grey. 
  Ask where you would, and all would say,
    The man admired and praised of all,
  By rich and poor, by grave and gay,
    Was the young lord of Greyling Hall.

  “Yes!  I had youth and rosy health,
  Was nobly formed, as man might be;
  For sickness, then, of all my wealth,
    I never gave a single fee: 
  The ladies fair, the maidens free. 
    Were all accustomed then to say,
  Who would a handsome figure see,
    Should look upon Sir Eustace Grey.

  “My lady I—­She was all we love;
    All praise, to speak her worth, is faint;
  Her manners show’d the yielding dove,
    Her morals, the seraphic saint: 
  She never breathed nor looked complaint;
    No equal upon earth had she: 
  Now, what is this fair thing I paint? 
    Alas! as all that live shall be.

  “There were two cherub-things beside,
    A gracious girl, a glorious boy;
  Yet more to swell my fall-blown pride,
    To varnish higher my fading joy,
  Pleasures were ours without alloy,
    Nay, Paradise,—­till my frail Eve
  Our bliss was tempted to destroy—­
    Deceived, and fated to deceive.

  “But I deserved;—­for all that time
    When I was loved, admired, caressed,
  There was within each secret crime,
    Unfelt, uncancelled, unconfessed: 
  I never then my God addressed,
    In grateful praise or humble prayer;
  And if His Word was not my jest—­
    (Dread thought!) it never was my care.”

The misfortunes of the unhappy man proceed apace, and blow follows blow.  He is unthankful for his blessings, and Heaven’s vengeance descends on him.  His wife proves faithless, and he kills her betrayer, once his trusted friend.  The wretched woman pines and dies, and the two children take some infectious disease and quickly follow.  The sufferer turns to his wealth and his ambitions to drug his memory.  But “walking in pride,” he is to be still further “abased.”  The “Watcher and the Holy One” that visited Nebuchadnezzar come to Sir Eustace in vision and pronounce his fate: 

  “Full be his cup, with evil fraught—­
    Demons his guides, and death his doom.”

Two fiends of darkness are told off to tempt him.  One, presumably the Spirit of Gambling, robs him of his wealth, while the Spirit of Mania takes from him his reason, and drags him through a hell of horriblest imaginings.  And it is at this point that what has been called the “dream-scenery” of the opium-eater is reproduced in a series of very remarkable stanzas: 

  Upon that boundless plain, below,
    The setting sun’s last rays were shed,
  And gave a mild and sober glow,
    Where all were still, asleep, or dead;
  Vast ruins in the midst were spread,
    Pillars and pediments sublime,
  Where the grey moss had form’d a bed,
    And clothed the crumbling spoils of time.