Hello, lovers of dVerse! Dora here from PilgrimDreams.com. So good to see you all after more than a month-long absence. I’ve missed you guys.

Welcome especially to dVersian votaries of the quadrille form, a 44-word poem original to dVerse whose only requirement other than word count is that you must include the word provided.

And the word is . . . (drumroll, please) . . . “VAMPIRE.”

Hardly a word that should pop into the mind of a debut quadrille host, you might think? But it’s not wholly random and I humbly ask for your indulgence on this fond mother on the eve of her daughter’s first book release, a vampire-infested mystery novel. What more can I say (other than click here for a list of booksellers)?!

Shameless, I know. Vampiric even, battening off your desire to spread your wings bat-like or howl like a wolf under the poetic moon in (44-word) abandon!

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“Unquenched, unquenchable,” Byron wrote of a vampire’s lust in “The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale”:

Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

excerpt from “The Giaour” (1810-1811) by George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

Neither was Coleridge averse to vampiric characters in “Christabel”:

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom, and half her side—
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

excerpt from “Christabel” (1797-1800) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Of “The Vampire-Bride,” Scottish poet Henry Thomas Liddell writes:

“I am come—I am come! once again from the tomb,
In return for the ring which you gave;
That I am thine, and that thou art mine,
This nuptial pledge receive.”

He lay like a corse ‘neath the Demon’s force,
And she wrapp’d him in a shround;
And she fixed her teeth his heart beneath,
And she drank of the warm life-blood!

And ever and anon murmur’d the lips of stone,
“Soft and warm is this couch of thine,
Thou’lt to-morrow be laid on a colder bed—
Albert! that bed will be mine!”

from The Wizard Of The North, The Vampire Bride, And Other Poems (1833)

The Savannah-born, southern American writer, Conrad Aiken, writes hauntingly of a soul-devouring vampire:

She rose among us where we lay.
She wept, we put our work away.
She chilled our laughter, stilled our play;
And spread a silence there.
And darkness shot across the sky,
And once, and twice, we heard her cry;
And saw her lift white hands on high
And toss her troubled hair.

What shape was this who came to us,
With basilisk eyes so ominous,
With mouth so sweet, so poisonous,
And tortured hands so pale?
We saw her wavering to and fro,
Through dark and wind we saw her go;
Yet what her name was did not know;
And felt our spirits fail.

excerpt from “The Vampire” (1914) by Conrad Aiken

A vampire need not, of course, be wholly supernatural while possessing the attributes of one. Kipling wrote his verse, “The Vampire,” based on the above painting. It begins:

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair—
(Even as you or I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand!

excerpt from “The Vampire” (1897) by Rudyard Kipling

Given the countless movies on vampires, are you a fan of any one movie that spooked you or an actor’s performance that chilled you? Quadrille it out for us! And don’t be shy: you can post more than one poem as the muse takes you.

So take it away, guys! Give us a 44-word poem including the word “vampire” (or a derivative thereof, such as “vamp”).

Post it on your blog. Link your poem to this dVerse post. Enter your name and your blog post link into Mr. Linky. Relax in a recumbent position (if only mentally) and drink lustily of your fellow poets’ renderings to a maximum surfeit of pleasure. Theirs is an open invitation as is yours.

N.B. The quadrille prompt stays open until Saturday, 3 P.M.