fantasies,
         Drop safely down the time,
   Leaving mine islèd self behind it far
Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas,
(As down the years the splendour voyages
   From some long ruined and night-submergèd star),
And in thy subject sovereign’s havening heart
Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore;
         Adding its wasteful more
To his own overflowing treasury.
So through his river mine shall reach thy sea,
         Bearing its confluent part;
         In his pulse mine shall thrill;
And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that’s still.

Ah! help, my Dæmon that hast served me well!
   Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace!
   I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight,
   As, poised upon this unprevisioned height,
         I lift into its place
The utmost aery traceried pinnacle.
So; it is builded, the high tenement,
         —God grant—to mine intent!
Most like a palace of the Occident,
      Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze,
               Its mounded blaze,
And washèd by the sunset’s rosy waves,
Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves.
      Yet wail, my spirits, wail!
So few therein to enter shall prevail!
Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire
A dragon baulked, with involuted spire,
And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire.
For at the elfin portal hangs a horn
      Which none can wind aright
      Save the appointed knight
Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born.
      All others stray forlorn,
Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled
Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously
      In half obscurity;
With mystic images, inhuman, cold,
      That flameless torches hold.
   But who can wind that horn of might
(The horn of dead Heliades) aright,—
            Straight
Open for him shall roll the conscious gate;
And light leap up from all the torches there,
And life leap up in every torchbearer,
And the stone faces kindle in the glow,
And into the blank eyes the irids grow,
And through the dawning irids ambushed meanings show.
         Illumined this wise on,
He threads securely the far intricacies,
   With brede from Heaven’s wrought vesture overstrewn;
Swift Tellus’ purfled tunic, girt upon
With the blown chlamys of her fluttering seas;
      And the freaked kirtle of the pearlèd moon:
Until he gain the structure’s core, where stands—
            A toil of magic hands—
The unbodied spirit of the sorcerer,
               Most strangely rare,
      As is a vision remembered in the noon;
Unbodied, yet to mortal seeing clear,
Like sighs exhaled in eager atmosphere.
From human haps and mutabilities
It rests exempt, beneath the edifice
         To which itself gave rise;
Sustaining centre to the bubble of stone
Which, breathed from it, exists by it alone.
   Yea, ere Saturnian earth her child consumes,
And I lie down with outworn ossuaries,
Ere death’s grim tongue anticipates the tomb’s
         Siste viator, in this storied urn
         My living heart is laid to throb and burn,
   Till end be ended, and till ceasing cease.

And thou by whom this strain hath parentage;
   Wantoner between the yet untreacherous claws
   Of newly-whelped existence! ere he pause,
What gift to thee can yield the archimage?
         For coming seasons’ frets
         What aids, what amulets,
         What softenings, or what brightenings?
As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings
   About the growling heads of the brute main
   Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again
   In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain;
So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads
Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads,
               Of pangs
Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate fangs,
I scourge beneath the torment of my charms
That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms.
And as yon Apollonian harp-player,
         Yon wandering psalterist of the sky,
With flickering strings which scatter melody,
The silver-stolèd damsels of the sea,
         Or lake, or fount, or stream,
   Enchants from their ancestral heaven of waters
To Naiad it through the unfrothing air;
      My song enchants so out of undulous dream
   The glimmering shapes of its dim-tressèd daughters,
And missions each to be thy minister.
               Saying; “O ye,
The organ-stops of being’s harmony;
The blushes on existence’s pale face,
         Lending it sudden grace;
Without whom we should but guess Heaven’s worth
By blank negations of this sordid earth,
      (So haply to the blind may light
Be but gloom’s undetermined opposite);
Ye who are thus as the refracting air
Whereby we see Heaven’s sun before it rise
Above the dull line of our mortal skies;
As breathing on the strainèd ear that sighs
From comrades viewless unto strainèd eyes,
Soothing our terrors in the lampless night;
Ye who can make this world where all is deeming
What world ye list, being arbiters of seeming;
Attend upon her ways, benignant powers!
Unroll ye life a carpet for her feet,
And cast ye down before them blossomy hours,
Until her going shall be clogged with sweet!
All dear emotions whose new-bathèd hair,
Still streaming from the soul, in love’s warm air
Smokes with a mist of tender fantasies;
            All these,
And all the heart’s wild growths which, swiftly bright,
Spring up the crimson agarics of a night,
No pain in withering, yet a joy arisen;
And all thin shapes more exquisitely rare,
            More subtly fair,
Than these weak ministering words have spell to prison
Within the magic circle of this rhyme;
And all the fays who in our creedless clime
            Have sadly ceased
Bearing to other children childhood’s proper feast;
Whose robes are fluent crystal, crocus-hued,
      Whose wings are wind a-fire, whose mantles wrought
         From spray that falling rainbows shake
      These, ye familiars to my wizard thought,
      Make things of journal custom unto her;
            With lucent feet imbrued,
      If young Day tread, a glorious vintager,
The wine-press of the purple-foamèd east;
Or round the nodding sun, flush-faced and sunken,
            His wild bacchantes drunken
Reel, with rent woofs a-flaunt, their westering rout.
—But lo! at length the day is lingered out,
At length my Ariel lays his viol by;
We sing no more to thee, child, he and I;
            The day is lingered out:
                  In slow wreaths folden