English

Chimaera writhes beside the tragic flame
of the old hearth: her starting jaws proclaim,
a silent cry, the craven world's attaint.
Her vans that beat against a hard constraint
leaps, as the coals jet in a moment-spasm:
yet their taut ribs hurt not the serpent chasm
of shade, that slips swift to its absent den,
to settle, grimlier, at her throat again.
And, starward were their prison-roof increas'd,
no sun that bathes him for a dewy east
would light her mail, above the tainted air
a meteor-dazzling gem, but the red flare

Twice now that lucid fiction of the pane
dissolves, the sphere that winter's crystal bane
still-charm'd to glass the sad metempsychose
and futile ages of the suffering rose —
what, in its halt, the weary mood might show.
Earth stirs in me that stirs with roots below,
and distant nerves shrink with the lilac mist
of perfume blossom'd round the lure that, kist,
is known hard burn o'erflaked and cruel sting.
I would this old illusion of the spring
might perish once with all her airs that fawn
and traitor roses of the wooing dawn:

There is a far-off thrill that troubles me:
a faint thin ripple of shadow, momently,
dies out across my lucid icy cell.
I am betrayed by winter to the spell
of morbid sleep, that somewhere rolls its waves
insidiously, gather'd from unblest graves,
to creep above each distant crumbled mole.
When that assault is full against my soul,
I must go down, thro' chapels black with mould,
past ruin'd doors, whose arches, ridged with gold,
catch, in their grooves, a gloom more blackly dript,

ONE ! an iron core, shock'd and dispers'd
in throbs of sound that ebb across the bay:
I shudder: the one clang smites disarray
thro' all my sense, that starts awake, inhears'd

in the whole lifeless world: and some accurs'd
miasma steals, resumed from all decay,
where the dead tide lies flat round the green quay,
hinting what self-fordone despairs it nurs'd.

The corpse of time is stark upon the night:
my soul is coffin'd, staring, grave-bedight,
upon some dance of death that reels and feasts

Lightning: and momently, the silhouette,
flat on the far horizon, comes and goes
of that night-haunting city; minaret,
dome, spire, all sharp while yet the levin glows.

Day knows it not; whether fierce noon-tide fuse
earth's rim with sky in throbbing haze, or clear
gray softness tinge afresh the enamell'd hues
of mead and stream, it shows no tipping spear.

Night builds it: now upon the marbled plain
a blur, discern'd lurking, ever more nigh;
now close against the walls that hem my reign

This night is not of gentle draperies
or cluster'd banners where the star-breaths roam,
nor hangs above the torch a lurching dome
of purple shade that slips with phantom ease;

but, on our apathy encroaching, these,
stable, whose smooth defiance none hath clomb,
basalt and jade, a patience of the gnome,
polish'd and shadow-brimm'd transparencies.

Far, where our oubliette is shut, above,
we guess the ample lids that never move
beneath her brows, each massive arch inert

Out of no quarter of the charted sky
flung in the bitter wind intolerably,
abrupt, the trump that sings behind the end
exults alone. Here grass is none to bend:
the stony plain blackens with rapid night
that best reveals the land's inflicted blight
since in the smitten hero-hand the sword
broke, and the hope the long-dumb folk adored,
and over all the north a tragic flare
told Valhall perish'd and the void's despair
to dwell as erst, all disinhabited,
a vault above the heart its hungering led.

Before she pass'd behind the glacier wall
that hides her white eternal sorceries
the northern witch, in clinging ermine pall,
cast one last look along the shallow seas,

a look that held them in its numbing thrall
and melted onward to the sandy leas
where our lorn city lives its lingering fall
and wistful summer shrinks in scant-clad trees.

Hence came one greyness over grass and stone:
the silent-lapping waters fade and tone
into the air and into them the land;

and all along our stagnant waterways

Breaking the desert's tawny level ring
three columns, an oasis; but no shade
falls from the curl'd acanthus-leaves; no spring
bubbles soft laughter for its leaning maid.
The cell is waste: where once the god abode
a burning desolation furls its wing:
enter, and lo! once more, the hopeless road
world-wide, the tawny desert's level ring.

A gray and dusty daylight flows
athwart the shatter'd traceries,
pale absence of the ruin'd rose.

Here once, on labour-harden'd knees,
beneath the kindly vaulted gloom
that gather'd them in quickening ease,

they saw the rose of heaven bloom,
alone, in heights of musky air,
with many an angel's painted plume.

So, shadowing forth their dim-felt prayer,
the daedal glass compell'd to grace
the outer day's indifferent stare,

where now its disenhallow'd face
beholds the petal-ribs enclose