I flow beneath the columns that upbearThe world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell;Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers tellMy motion nadir-ward; no moment's flareGives each to each the shapes that, unaware,Commingle at my verge, to test the spellOf waves intense with night, whose deeps compelOne face from pain, and rapture, and despair.The fruitless earth's denied and cheated sonsMeet here, where fruitful and unfruitful cease.And when their lords, the mightier, hidden Ones,Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low,Shall they not come, and from the oblivious flowDrink at one draught a universe of peace?
ATLANTIS
Above its domes the gulfs accumulateTo where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed;But here the buried waters take no heed—Deaf, and with closèd lips from press of weightImposed by ocean. Dim, inanimate,On temples of an unremembered creedInvolved in long, slow tentacles of weed,The dead tide lies immovable as Fate.From out the ponderous-vaulted ocean-dome,A clouded light is questionably shedOn altars of a goddess garlandedWith blossoms of some weird and hueless vine;And wingèd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam,Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine.
THE UNREVEALED
How dense the glooms of Death, imperviousTo aught of old memorial light! How straitThe sunless road, suspended, separate,That leads to later birth! UntremulousWith any secret morn of stars, to usThe Past is closed as with division greatOf planet-girdling seas—unknown its gate,Beyond the mouths of shadows cavernous.Oh! may it be that Death in kindness stripsThe soul of memory's raiment, rendering blindOur vision, lest surmounted deeps appal,As when on mountain peaks a glance behindBetrays with knowledge, and the climber slipsDown gulfs of fear to some enormous fall?
THE ELDRITCH DARK
Now as the twilight's doubtful intervalCloses with night's accomplished certainty,A wizard wind goes crying eerily;And in the glade unsteady shadows crawl,Timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fallAs with some dreadful witches' ecstasy,Flung upward to the dark, whence glitters freeThe crooked moon, impendent over all.Twin veils of covering cloud and silence thrownAcross the movement and the sound of things,Make blank the night, till in the broken westThe moon's ensanguined blade awhile is shown....The night grows whole again.... The shadows rest,Gathered beneath a greater shadow's wings.