Arise as might some Afrit-builded18 city
Consummate in the lifting of a lash
425
With thunderous domes and sounding obelisks
And towers of night and fire alternate! Wings
Of white-hot stone along the hissing wind
Bear up the huge and furnace-hearted beasts
Of hells beyond Rutilicus;19 and things
430
Whose lightless length would mete the gyre of moons—
Born from the caverns of a dying sun—
Uncoil to the very zenith, half-disclosed
From gulfs below the horizon; octopi
Like blazing moons with countless arms of fire,
435
Climb from the seas of ever-surging flame
That roll and roar through planets unconsumed,
Beating on coasts of unknown metals; beasts
That range the mighty worlds of Alioth20 rise,
Afforesting the heavens with multitudinous horns
440
Amid whose maze the winds are lost; and borne
On cliff-like brows of plunging scolopendras,
The shell-wrought towers of ocean-witches loom;
And griffin-mounted gods, and demons throned
On sable dragons, and the cockodrills
445
That bear the spleenful pygmies on their backs;
And blue-faced wizards from the worlds of Saiph,21
On whom Titanic scorpions fawn; and armies
That move with fronts reverted from the foe,
And strike athwart their shoulders at the shapes
450
Their shields reflect in crystal; and eidola
Fashioned within unfathomable caves
By hands of eyeless peoples; and the blind
Worm-shapen monsters of a sunless world,
With krakens from the ultimate abyss,
455
And Demogorgons of the outer dark,
Arising, shout with dire multisonous clamors,
And threatening me with dooms ineffable
In words whereat the heavens leap to flame,
Advance upon the enchanted palace. Falling
460
For league on league before, their shadows blight
And eat like fire the amaranthine meads,
Leaving an ashen desert. In the palace
I hear the apes of marble shriek and howl,
And all the women-shapen columns moan,
465
Babbling with terror. In my tenfold fear,
A monstrous dread unnamed in any hell,
I rise, and flee with the fleeing wind for wings,
And in a trice the wizard palace reels,
And spiring to a single tower of flame,
470
Goes out, and leaves nor shard nor ember! Flown
Beyond the world upon that fleeing wind
I reach the gulf’s irrespirable verge,
Where fails the strongest storm for breath, and fall,
Supportless, through the nadir-plungèd gloom,
475
Beyond the scope and vision of the sun,
To other skies and systems.
In a world
Deep-wooded with the multi-colored fungi
That soar to semblance of fantastic palms,
I fall as falls the meteor-stone, and break
480
A score of trunks to atom-powder. Unharmed
I rise, and through the illimitable woods,
Among the trees of flimsy opal, roam,
And see their tops that clamber hour by hour
To touch the suns of iris. Things unseen,
485
Whose charnel breath informs the tideless air
With spreading pools of fetor, follow me,
Elusive past the ever-changing palms;
And pittering moths with wide and ashen wings
Flit on before, and insects ember-hued,
490
Descending, hurtle through the gorgeous gloom
And quench themselves in crumbling thickets. Heard
Far off, the gong-like roar of beasts unknown
Resounds at measured intervals of time,
Shaking the riper trees to dust, that falls
495
In clouds of acrid perfume, stifling me
Beneath an irised pall.
Now the palmettoes
Grow far apart, and lessen momently
To shrubs a dwarf might topple. Over them
I see an empty desert, all ablaze
500
With amethysts and rubies, and the dust
Of garnets or carnelians. On I roam,
Treading the gorgeous grit, that dazzles me
With leaping waves of endless rutilance,
Whereby the air is turned to a crimson gloom
505
Through which I wander blind as any Kobold;
Till underfoot the grinding sands give place
To stone or metal, with a massive ring
More welcome to mine ears than golden bells
Or tinkle of silver fountains. When the gloom
510
Of crimson lifts, I stand upon the edge
Of a broad black plain of adamant that reaches,
Level as windless water, to the verge
Of all the world; and through the sable plain
A hundred streams of shattered marble run,
515
And streams of broken steel, and streams of bronze,
Like to the ruin of all the wars of time,
To plunge with clangor of timeless cataracts
Adown the gulfs eternal.
So I follow
Between a river of steel and a river of bronze,
520
With ripples loud and tuneless as the clash
Of a million lutes; and come to the precipice
From which they fall, and make the mighty sound
Of a million swords that meet a million shields,
Or din of spears and armor in the wars
525
Of half the worlds and eons. Far beneath
They fall, through gulfs and cycles of the void,
And vanish like a stream of broken stars
Into the nether darkness; nor the gods
Of any sun, nor demons of the gulf,
530
Will dare to know what everlasting sea
Is fed thereby, and mounts forevermore
In one unebbing tide.
What nimbus-cloud
Or night of sudden and supreme eclipse,
Is on the suns of opal? At my side
535
The rivers run with a wan and ghostly gleam
Through darkness falling as the night that falls
From spheres extinguished. Turning, I behold
Betwixt the sable desert and the suns,
The poisèd wings of all the dragon-rout,
540
Far-flown in black occlusion thousand-fold
Through stars, and deeps, and devastated worlds,
Upon my trail of terror! Griffins, rocs,
And sluggish, dark chimeras, heavy-winged
After the ravin of dispeopled lands,
545
And harpies, and the vulture-birds of hell,
Hot from abominable feasts, and fain
To cool their beaks and talons in my blood—
All, all have gathered, and the wingless rear,
With rank on rank of foul, colossal Worms,
550
Makes horrent now the horizon. From the van
I hear the shriek of wyvers, loud and shrill
As tempests in a broken fane, and roar
Of sphinxes, like relentless toll of bells
From towers infernal. Cloud on hellish cloud
555
They arch the zenith, and a dreadful wind
Falls from them like the wind before the s
torm,
And in the wind my riven garment streams
And flutters in the face of all the void,
Even as flows a flaffing spirit, lost
560
On the pit’s undying tempest. Louder grows
The thunder of the streams of stone and bronze—
Redoubled with the roar of torrent wings
Inseparably mingled. Scarce I keep
My footing in the gulfward winds of fear,
565
And mighty thunders beating to the void
In sea-like waves incessant; and would flee
With them, and prove the nadir-founded night
Where fall the streams of ruin. But when I reach
The verge, and seek through sun-defeating gloom
570
To measure with my gaze the dread descent,
I see a tiny star within the depths—
A light that stays me while the wings of doom
Convene their thickening thousands: for the star
Increases, taking to its hueless orb,
575
With all the speed of horror-changèd dreams,
The light as of a million million moons;
And floating up through gulfs and glooms eclipsed
It grows and grows, a huge white eyeless Face
That fills the void and fills the universe,
580
And bloats against the limits of the world
With lips of flame that open. . . .
A PSALM TO THE BEST BELOVED
Thou comfortest me with the manna of thy love,
And the kisses of thy mouth are wine and sustenance;
They are grateful as fruit
In lonely orchards by the wayside of a ruinous land,
5
They are sweet as the purple grapes
On parching hills that confront the autumnal desert,
Or apples that the mad simoom hath spared
In a garden with walls of syenite.
Thy loosened hair is a veil
10
For the weariness of mine eyes and eyelids,
Which have known the redoubled sun
In a desert valley with slopes of the dust of white marble,
And have gazed on the mounded salt
In the marshes of a lake of dead waters.
15
Thy body is a secret Eden
Fed with lethean springs,
And the touch of thy flesh is like to the savor of lotos.
In thy hair is a perfume of ecstasy,
And a perfume of sleep;
20
Between thy thighs is a valley of delight,
And a valley of peace.
THE WITCH WITH EYES OF AMBER
I met a witch with amber eyes
Who slowly sang a scarlet rune,
Shifting to an icy laughter
Like the laughter of the moon.
5
Red as a wanton’s was her mouth,
And fair the breast she bade me take
With a word that clove and clung
Burning like a furnace-flake.
But from her bright and lifted bosom,
10
When I touched it with my hand,
Came the many-needled coldness
Of a glacier-taken land.
And, lo! the witch with eyes of amber
Vanished like a blown-out flame,
15
Leaving but the lichen-eaten
Stone that bore a blotted name.
WE SHALL MEET
We shall meet
Once again
In the strange and latter summers,
And recall,
5
Like olden mummers,
An old play of love and pain.
I shall greet
You not with kisses
Of the days aforetime, knowing
10
These would fall
Vain as those of phantoms blowing
Nightward to the last abysses.
Faint perfume
Will attend you
15
Like a scrine-imprisoned myrrh;
And my dreaming
Heart where fallen autumns stir
Half their fallen light will lend you.
From the tomb
20
Love shall rise
Mutely, in a spectre’s fashion,
To the seeming
Lamps for ever bleak and ashen
Of our necromantic eyes.
25
But no tear
Shall we weep,
Knowing tears are void and vain,
Like the scattered
Drops of rain
30
On a desert’s iron sleep.
Chill and sere,
Like the grass
Flaffing in a field of snow,
We shall know that nothing mattered,
35
As we tell our faded woe
Ere we pass.
ON RE-READING BAUDELAIRE
Forgetting still what holier lilies bloom
Secure within the garden of lost years,
We water with the fitfulness of tears
Wan myrtles with an acrid sick perfume;
5
Lethean lotus, laurels of our doom,
Dark amarant with tall unswaying spears,
Await funereal autumn and its fears
In this grey land that sullen suns illume.
Ivy and rose and hellebore we twine.
10
Voluptuous as love, or keen as grief,
Some fleeing fragrance lures us in the gloom
To Paphian dells or vales of Proserpine. . . .22
But all the flowers, with dark or pallid leaf,
Become at last a garland for the tomb.
TO GEORGE STERLING: A VALEDICTION
I
Farewell, a late farewell! Tearless and unforgetting,
Alone, aloof, I twine
Cypress and golden rose, plucked at the chill sunsetting,
5
Into a garland wove not too unworthily
For thee who seekest now an asphodel divine.
Though immaterial the leaf and blossom be,
Haply they shall outlinger these the seasons bring,
The seasons take, and tell of mortal monody
10
Through many a mortal spring.
II
Once more, farewell! Naught is to do, naught is to say,
Naught is to sing but sorrow!
For grievous is the night, and dolorous the day
In this one hell of all the damned we wander thorough.
15
Thou hast departed—and the dog and swine abide,
The fetid-fingered ghouls will delve, on many a morrow
In charnel, urn and grave: the sun shall lantern these,
Oblivious, till they too have faltered and have died,
And are no more than pestilential breath that flees
20
On air unwalled and wide.
III
Let ape and pig maintain their council and cabal:
In ashes gulfward hurled,
Thou art gone forth with all of loveliness, with all
Of glory long withdrawn from a desertless world.
25
Now let the loathlier vultures of the soul convene:
They have no wings to follow thee, whose flight is furled
Upon oblivion’s nadir, or some lost demesne
Of the pagan dead, vaulted with perfume and with fire,
Where blossoms immarcescible in verspertine
30
Strange amber air suspire.
IV
Peace, peace! for grief and bitterness avails not ever,
And sorrow wrongs thy sleep:
Better it is to be as thou, who art forever
As part and p
arcel of the infinite fair deep—
35
Who dwellest now in mystery, with days hesternal
And time that is not time: we have no need to weep,
For woe may not befall, where thou in ways supernal
Hast found the perfect love that is oblivion,
The poppy-tender lips of her that reigns, eternal,
40
In realms not of the sun.
V
Peace, peace! Idle is our procrastinating praise,
Hollow the harps of laud;
And not necessitous the half-begrudgèd bays
To thee, whose song forecrowned thee for a lyric god,
45
Whose name shall linger strangely, in the sunset years,
As music from a more enchanted period—
An echo flown upon the changing hemispheres,
Re-shaped with breath of alien maiden, alien boy,
Re-sung in future cities, mixed with future tears,
50
And with remoter joy.
VI
From Aphrodite thou hast turned to Proserpine:
No treason hast thou done,
For neither goddess is a goddess more divine,
And verily, my brother, are the twain not one?
55
We too, as thou, with hushed desire and silent paean,
Beyond the risen dark, beyond the fallen sun,
Shall follow her, whose pallid breasts, on shores Lethean,
Are favorable phares to barges of the world;
And we shall find her there, even as the Cytherean,23
60
In love and slumber furled.
ANTERIOR LIFE
Long since, I lived in lordly porches fronting
With thronged, enormous pillars to the tide,
Where day as in basaltic caverns died
With seaward gleams along the columns shunting.
5
The surges rolled the reflex of the skies
Before my portals, mystically blending
Their consonance of solemn chords unending
With the nacre and rose ignited in mine eyes.
I lay supine through days with amber scented,
10
Blue-litten by the vast and vagrant wave,
Nursing a sombre secret none could know:
On the full bosom of a golden slave
My feet reposed, and sable queens invented
Fantastic love to tease my weary woe.
HYMN TO BEAUTY
Fallest thou from the heavens, or soarest from the abyss,
O Beauty? Thy regard infernal and divine
Pours out, in vast confusion, crime and benefice,
And therefore one might well compare thee unto wine.
5
The sunset and the dawn in thy deep eyes are holden;
Thou sheddest forth perfumes like a tempestuous eve;
Thy mouth, a philtred amphora, doth the child embolden,