Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

Far-wandering when rich moonlight drenches
The hollow night's empurpled dome,
And shelving roof and gable blanches,
And paves with fire the paths I roam,
I float about this elfin city,
And thread sweet labyrinthine ways,
A burning Dream of love and pity
On wine-wet wings that steer through haze.

A sheen swims on each darkened casement,
The long canals lie luminous-pale,
And soaring spires, from vane to basement,
All burn steel-blue like warriors' mail;
And multitudinous over Heaven
Swarm little flakes of dappled fleece,

Wherein the white disc, swathed and shriven,
Of midnight's moon may gloat in peace.

I wander musing songs that never
On lips of man before have burned,
Sweet words that sail with no endeavour
Upon the waves of tunes unlearned,
By winds of unknown passion carried
O'er unknown seas of starless skies,
Where darkness and despair are married
With drowsy fumes of Paradise.

And statue-shapes flit murmuring by me,
Greek-featured, swathed in fiery pain,
Blue-lidded gorgeous globes that eye me,
Wine-coloured hair or amber grain,
Strong-limbed, deep-bosomed as the Graces,
And bird-like poised on wingèd feet,
But with the Furies' pallid faces,
And with the Furies' lips of heat.

While far and faint and sadly taunting,
Like voices from beyond the tomb,
Or memories of some star still haunting
Our dreams of life before the womb,

'Mid smoking light from casements open
Come ebbing airs that swoon and sob
With panting passionate gusts of Chopin,
Or old Béthoven's thunder-throb:

Long wails that flower-like fade and languish,
Stray wraiths of Schubert's sweetest note,
Sad raptures and delicious anguish
That round and o'er me pause and float,
Unfettered souls that do inherit
The thin-aired superlunar clime,
And scarcely less a tune or spirit
I drift with them, a wandering rhyme.