University of Virginia Library

PILED earth above my head did lie,
And from my sight the flower-blue sky
Was hidden by a waste of stone;
And I in earth was left alone,
To search the secrets of the tomb.
Waste night was there and speechless gloom,
And I thought not nor wonderéd
Nor groped into the dusk with dread;
For Death had crown'd me with a crown
Of Lethe-weeds, that bound me down
In opiate trances. In a swoon
Of death I lay, wherein the moon
Seem'd spread above me like a flower,
That glitters in the midnight hour
Above the glass of some strange lake,
And from it falling dews did slake
My yearning for the coming things.
Meseem'd my soul had lost its wings
And could not lift itself away
From out that prison-place of clay.
Strange peace possess'd me and content;
Meseem'd the springs of wonderment
And fear were lapsed from me with death,
And with the 'scape of earthly breath
Desire was dead of heart and brain.
The memories of joy and pain
Had in the life that goes before
The change of being, at the core
Of that great darkness, glimmer'd yet,
In characters of silver set
Against the gloom; but in my breast
Their scroll-work was a palimpsest
Whereon no writing, bright or dark,
Did burn. My soul their forms did mark,
As one that looks upon a masque
With absent eyes, too dull to ask
Of what these shadows told and whom:
Death fill'd me so, there was no room
For aught that unto life pertain'd.

And so the ages came and waned
(Meseem'd) and in a sleep of sound
And sight, I lay within the ground,
Lapt in a trance of senselessness.
So hard the stillness seem'd to press
Upon me, that methought I sank,
Athwart the centre black and dank,
A fathom deep with every age,
Passing strange seas that still did rage
In silence; caverns in the rock,
Wherein pent gases for the shock
Of earthquakes lay engarner'd up;
Red fires, that boil'd within a cup
Of adamant, and grisly shapes,
That mopp'd and mow'd like devils' apes
As I sank past them, like a stone
That to the deepest deeps is thrown
Of some dull ocean. Here the ground
Shook with the phantom of a sound,
As if some cataract of flame
Roar'd down the channels without name
That tunnel all the middle world:
And here strange midworld thunders hurl'd
And echo'd, beating back the sound
With livid jets of light, that wound
And leapt and crawl'd, like hell-fire snakes
A-pastime. Now I pass'd grim lakes,
Whereon a silence horrible
Did brood, and from the darkness fell
Into the pool great gouts of blood
And redden'd all the grisly flood
With lurid flakes. And then again
I fell and fell, athwart a rain
(Methought) of stars, that long had lost,
For some old sin, the glittering ghost
That lit their orbits,—white and pale,
Prick'd out against the grave-grey veil
Of the stern darkness, like a flight
Of moths against an Autumn night,
Spectral and sad. And now a roar
Of hollow-moaning torrents tore
The ghastly calm, and white wild waves
Rent up the crannied midworld caves
About me: and I saw afar
A phosphorescence like a star
Floating above the grey abyss
Of waters, as a soul that is
Doom'd to dim wanderings o'er the sea
Of some unterm'd eternity.
And as I sank, I felt the throng
Of waves beneath me, and along
The lightless caverns I was borne
Betwixt harsh flaming rocks, betorn
With clash of waves and billows' war,
Toward the ever fleeting star,
Set in its mystic veils of gloom.

Roars rent the earth in all her womb,
As, bearing me, the torrent fled
Past all the seats of quick and dead
In the red centre; and the core
Of the huge mountains, that upbore
The pinnacles of heaven, groan'd
With the fierce pain: the black rocks moan'd
And all the deeps cried out for rage
And terror. Still, for many an age,
Methought the stream fell evermore,
And I with it, athwart the roar
Of clashing powers,—and still the light
Fled farther through the hideous night,
Above the grisly torrent-flow
And the rock-cataracts. And so,
For centuries I fell and fell
Past all the flaming mouths of hell,
Until at last meseem'd the spell
Of sleep that bound me stronger grew,
As 'twere grim hands of darkness drew
Curtains of bronze about my sense;
And all the shadow waxed so dense,
That sight and hearing utterly
Were for a time bereft from me,
And I was soulless for a space.

Then suddenly the swart embrace
Of night was slack'd and all the chains
Of blackness loosed me. So, with pains
Unutterable, sense tore back
Into my brain and with the rack,
I felt that I had ceased to fall.
Then, gazing up through shroud and pall,
I saw the coffin-lid had grown
Translucent as the silver stone
That moulds the flanges of the moon:
And through the lid, a light was strewn
Upon my face, such as is shed
From many a body of the dead,
Night-raised beneath the starless sky
For curséd witchcraft. And as I
Strove tow'rd the glimmer, I was ware
That all the bands that bound me there
Had loosed my limbs and every sense
Was free from thrall: the cerements
Slid off, as mists fall from the day,
And up I stood, a phantom grey
And awful, in the dim blue gloom.

The place was like some old god's tomb,
Built high with grisly walls and ceil'd
With a black dome-work, like a shield
Of iron bossed with ebony:
And there no thing the eye could see,
Save the gray walls and the pale light,
That seem'd as 'twere the corpse of night,
Rotted to phosphorescency:
But, as I paced it endlessly
About the dismal place, that shone
With that strange glitter,—blue and wan
With my long tomb-sleep,—there was shown
To me a postern in the stone,
Built low within the wall to mock
A slit tomb-opening in the rock
Deep hewn. I push'd the portal through,
And as I strove, the glimmer grew
From out the darkness concentrate
Into blue globes of fire and fate
And on the lintel in the gloom
Did grave strange signs of awe and doom,
In unknown mystic tongues that write
Runes in the bowels of the night.

The postern open'd, and I past
Into a place all weird and ghast
With one eternal emptiness:
There was no living thing to bless
The grim dead waste of that sad scape
With any sign of life or shape.
Wave after wave, like a pale sea
Fix'd by some fearful sorcery
To semblant earth, the grey waste spread,
As limitless as to the dead
The death-swoon seems, within a shroud
Of silentness. Above, a cloud
Of vapours, twisted as it were
By winds long died out of the air,
Hung like an imminence of doom:
One felt that never on that gloom
Had Heav'n's breath fallen nor to all
Eternity should ever fall.

Then was my spirit sore dismay'd
By that weird voidness, all outlaid
Before me, like a dead world's ghost;
And back I turn'd me, having lost
All wish for going and desire,
Save in the grave to rest from fire
And imminence of mystery.
But, as I groped about to see
The backward way, behold, the door
Was disappear'd, and there no more
Was any opening in the grey
Of the grim rampire. Then away
Out of my soul the dull fear past,
And with swift steps into the vast
Grey lapses of the plain I went:
And as I sped, my thought was blent
With a strange lightness of desire,
That seem'd to draw me ever nigher
To some completion of my spright.
Wings fail'd me not: I was so light
Of going that I seem'd to float
Upon the greyness, like a boat
Of mid-air souls, that in the night
Is borne upon the waves of light
That ripple round the trancéd moon.

About me lay the night, aswoon
With second death, so still it was,—
Save now and then a mote would pass
Of strange-hued light, and in the mote
Meseem'd pale presences did float
Of unknown essence. Blue and weird,
They rose on me and disappear'd
Into the dusk, and suddenly
I was aware that I did flee
In a blue vapour, luminous
With my soul's glimmer, like to those
That fleeted past me. On and on
I flitted through the darkness wan;
And ever thicker swarm'd the motes,
Like to some shining mist that floats
Above a marish,—and anon,
Meseem'd some phantom brightlier shone
A second's space, as it drew nigh
Some other flame, and momently
The twain went, circling round and round
Each other, o'er the grisly ground,
Striving, it seem'd, to meet; but ever
Some viewless hand their loves did sever,
And with a shock of rent desires,
They leapt asunder. Then tall spires
Of flaming bronze rose zenith-high
Upon the marges of the sky,
And round the flames I saw grey things
That hover'd on their filmy wings
About the turrets, circle-wise,
Striving, methought, tow'rd heav'n to rise
On the fierce flood of fire, that bore
The skyward spikes, but evermore
The frail wings fail'd them, scorch'd away
By the red flame; and yet the essay
Renewing ever, from the ground
They struggled up and circled round
The pitiless spirals, but again
To be hurl'd earthward in a rain
Of passionate fire-flakes. Still I fled
Across that desert of the dead
And past the towers, that burnt aloft
Like fixt flames, till the air grew soft
With some strange melody, that rose
Out of the gloom, with close on close
Of sad and vaporous harmony:
One might not tell if it should be
The dim wild wail of sprites forlorn
Or some weird waftings, upward borne,
Of perfume from ghost-flowers of night,
So blended all its sad delight
Was with the measures of a song
And the mute harmonies that throng
And hover o'er a night-flower's cup:
And as its phrases waver'd up,
Ineffable, from out the night
And its weird silences, each light
Leant to the cadence, and across
The air, the pulse harmonious
Compell'd the ghost-motes to a maze
Of intertwisted rhythmic ways,
A measure of strange guise, wherein
The rhythms of the song were twin
With those that sleep in light and those
That in the perfumes of the rose
Throb dumbly aye, by some strange stress
Evoked from out their silentness
To vaguest life. It seem'd to me,
The sad strange dance's mystery
Involved all sorrows and all fears,
All ecstasies of hopes and tears,
And all the yearning that survives
To the grey ghosts from bygone lives
And lives to come, if such shall be,
Fore-cast by stress of memory:
A rhythm, slow and interlaced
With trails of pause, as if thought chased
A long-loved memory through a maze
Of desert passion-tangled ways,
For ever hopelessly, and ne'er
Might win to grasp the vision fair
And piteous. And as I gazed
Upon the dances, unamazed,
For voidness of a ghost's desire,
A strange faint perfume did aspire
Through all my sense, and with the scent
There came a sudden ravishment
Of dead desires, and there did seize
Upon me all old memories
And all the tyrannies of thought,
A sheaf of all life's shorn threads wrought
To some weird web of wishful pain.
The impulses, that from my brain
Had faded out with life, came back
With the old eddying whirl and rack
Of imminent longing; and the song,
Meseem'd, in all its closes long
And soft, exhaled my very soul
And all its melodies of dole
And striving, wafted through the gate
Of death, — ah, how most sublimate
And shadowy! And no less, methought,
In all the rhythm there was wrought
For me a sense of winding feet
And hands stretch'd floatingly to meet
Celestial hands, — of spiral flames
Wavering up aye toward vague aims
Of rest and spirit-peace fulfill'd:
And with the passion sad and still'd
Of those weird measures, all my sense
Vibrated, like a lyre-string, tense
And shaken by a summer wind,
Until the influences did bind
My senses to a following
Of their strange rhythm and did bring
My will within some mystic spell
Of motion, potent to compel
The uncorpsed essence. So the law
Of that sad ecstasy did draw
My spright to it, and wavering,
I circled in that mystic ring
Of song and colour and perfume,
Athwart the wide, unbroken gloom,
In a still frenzy of content,
A sad harmonious ravishment
Of wan delights. It seem'd to me
The very passionless harmony
Of aspiration tow'rd the aim
My soul alive could never name,
Much less attain to, fill'd the deeps
Of my void yearning with dim sleeps
Of Autumn-colour'd seas, that lay
And sway'd above the iron grey
Of the grim ocean-bed and lull'd
The monsters there to slumber, dull'd
With melodies monotonous;
Save one stern thought, that ever was
Implacable, a snake of Fate,
In the mid-cavern deeps await
To fix its stings into my heart
And rend my being with the smart
Of its fell fangs, lashing the foam
To tempest. So my spright did roam
In those song-govern'd wanderings,
And the flower-breathings from the strings
Of my stretch'd soul drew wave on wave
Of sighing music, faint and grave
As the sad ghost-light, 'mid that throng
Of glimmering presences; how long
Meknoweth not; until, meseem'd,
Upon the far sky-marge there gleam'd
A reddening glimmer and there ceased
Some dele the greyness from the east
Of that sad plain, as 'twere the gloom
Had for long dint of death become
Half phosphorescent. Through the grey
The shadow-dawn came, — such a day!
There is no saddest autumn night,
Grey with the end of the grey light,
That could its pallor call to mind.
It was as if a worldward wind
Brought up from sea-tombs far away
The shadow-ghost of some dead day,
Long hidden in the shrouds of years,
A day made pale with many tears
And many a memory of affright.
The shadow-sun rose, ashen-white,
From out the shadow-deeps below,
As 'twere a star dead long ago
And waked to ghost-life in a swoon,
Beneath the sorcery of the moon;
And as its whiteness wan and chill
Slid through the void, the air grew still:
The mystic measures did forsake
The rhythm of the dance: there brake
The charm of scents that did compel
My spell-bound senses and there fell
A witchery of silentness
Upon the plains. Then, press on press,
A mist of dreams rose wavering
Out of the earth, and everything
Changed aspect. All the waste did take
The semblance of a shadowy lake,
With shores of marish, set with reeds
And armies of grey-flowering weeds.
Across the dull unmirroring face
Of the sad flood did interlace
A countless multitude of flowers,
As colourless as winter hours:
Great flaccid irises, that erst,
(I dreamed), in life's long summery burst
Had flamed with many a bell of blue,
Mocking the August-tided hue
Of the sweet sky, or sweltered up
From the clear lake with many a cup
Of pers and inde imperial,
But now were grey and hueless all,
Phantoms in that phantasmal air
Of bygone sweets: and too were there
Strange pallid lilies, sad and wide,
Streak'd with dull flakes of grey and pied
With ghosts of many long-dead hues:
And from the flowers accursèd dews
Stream'd up in mists towards the light.

And as I gazed, their scent did smite
Upon my sense and I was ware
That those curst bells the phantoms were
Of the rich summer-tide of flowers,
That, in its golden-threaded hours,
The passion of my soul pour'd out
From its fresh song-spring. Past a doubt
I knew the blossoms of my Spring
And the rich summer's flowering
Of gold and azure, ay, no less,
The autumn's blaze of restlessness
And the dim winter's flowers of snow, —
And all my heart did overflow
With bitterness, to see even these
Lie in the hueless shadow-peace,
Dead and ghost-pale: for I had long
Gladden'd myself, that this my song
Should never die, but 'mid the death,
Day after day, that cumbereth
The fine-strung soul, had comforted
My failing hope with the sweet thought,
(When this my hopelessness was sped,)
That these my flowers, that I had wrought
With pain and urgence of duresse,
Should bloom unsullied from the press
Of world-worn lives and spare for aye
My purest part from Time's decay.

Full long and sadly did I gaze
Upon them with a drear amaze;
For with remembrance had return'd
The pangs of all the years I burn'd
Toward an unattainèd goal,
Receding ever, — till my soul
Was stirred by a new wonderment
And from my sense the ghostly scent
Before a fresh impress did flee:
For there was wroughten suddenly
A new enchantment from the veils
Of the drawn mists and all the sails
Veer'd thither of my soul. About
The marish-borders started out
A maze of buildings of a dream;
Ranges of steads, that all did gleam
With white fantastic porticoes;
High temples, with pale ghostly shows
Of colonnades and peristyles,
Prolong'd and join'd for unknown miles,
In maddening endless countlessness.
Grey cloister did on cloister press,
Far stretching on through devious ways
Into the intermittent haze
That closed the distance. Through the veil
Of mists, thin pinnacles did scale
The midmost heaven with mazy spires,
Round which, like ways of men's desires,
The cloisters strove toward the sky.
It seem'd one vast infinity
Of netted ways, most desolate
And awful in their silent state,
Their shadeless symmetry of white:
For, of a verity, one might
Throughout their solemn mystery
Wander a long eternity
And never come to find the end,
Whereto the devious ways did tend
In their dim silence-folded heart.

Then, as I stood a space apart,
No little wondering, from the lake
The mists that hover'd up did take
In the dawn-glimmer shadow-shape
And in pale semblances did drape
Their shimmery essence. All the air
Was full of ghosts, that down the stair
Of the pale light troop'd from the shore
And the curst marish to the core
Of the unending shadow-town.
Throng after throng they lighted down,
And in grey hosts funereal,
Dispersed in every cloister'd hall,
They flitted through the endless aisles
Of those void mazes, — miles on miles,
Wandering as 'twere with hopeless eyes
And outstretch'd eager hands, mere sighs
Of yearning tow'rd some darling thing,
For which even death could never bring
The death of longing: and meseem'd
Each of the shadowy folk, that stream'd
Along the cloisters, 'twixt the walls
Of mist, had, in the shadow-halls
Of the dead dreams, been known of me.
Methought, in each some fragrancy
Of my own unfulfill'd desire
Was prison'd, — and with straining hands,
I strove toward them: but the bands
Of some stern Fate did bind my will
And held me solitary still.
But, as I stood and wept for pain
Of my void yearning, o'er the plain
Of weeds and flowers, a low chill breeze
Rose mutely and on me did seize
With all its fluttering hands of wind:
So that my semblance, all entwined
With airy pinions, it did raise
And waft across the still lake-ways,
Like some thin down of daffodil
Or windflower ravish'd up, until
It set me in the midmost court
Of the vast halls, wherefrom, athwart
The stillness, all the soundless ways
Fill'd the grey vistas with a maze
Of column'd arches. Then the breeze
Ceased softly from the misted leas,
And in void wonder I remain'd.
Awhile, in a strange calm, enchain'd
By some vague sense of coming Fate,
Mute in the centre court I sate
And watch'd with absent eyes the flights
Of that pale crowd of eager sprights
Athwart the desert columnings:
And now and then, from unseen strings
And pipes, soft sighs exanimate
Of music made the air vibrate
With vaporous rhythms and there fell
The harmonies ineffable
Of spirit-psalms upon my ear.

And so, through many a lapsing year,
Meseem'd, I sat nor cared arise,
Until betwixt those songful sighs
There swell'd upon my ghostly sense
A breath of mystic ravishments,
Such as had waved about my thought,
When in the worldly life I wrought
My wish to palaces of dreams,
Sun-gilded by no earthly beams,
In visions sweet and intricate.
It seem'd as if some flower of fate,
For this my secret set apart,
Breathed out to me its inmost heart
In trails of perfume, to express
My unform'd longing, — with such stress
Of sympathy it seem'd to speak
To me. And as I turn'd to seek
The mystic power, that did fulfil
My wish with perfume, — on the sill
Of a low arch, through which a scape
Of aisles began, I saw a shape,
Array'd in star-prick'd robes of mist,
Soft sapphire and pale amethyst
And every tender mystic hue
Of emblem'd sadness, and I knew
A white dream-haunted face and eyes
Brimm'd with blue shadowy memories,
A sad sweet mouth, that had alone
In the dim vision-ways been shown
To my desire. It was, meseem'd,
The perfectness of all I dream'd,
The gathering from strife and storm
Of all my lost ones, in the form
Of a fair woman-ghost revealed.
And as I gazed on her, eye-seal'd
With ravishment, the fair shape came
Toward me, like a mingled flame
Of white and blue, till I could see
Her ghostly beauty perfectly.
There was a light of dim dead grace,
A wild waste beauty in her face,
That told of very tender love
In that sweet world that is above
Our place of shadows, — love and grief
Bounden together in one sheaf
By Death in his pale harvesting.
In her, dead Love had taken wing
Out of the ruins of the past,
A sky-pure thing, that all had cast
Its chrysalis in the grave-hush.

Then, at her sight, my soul did rush
To her embraces, as assured
In her the weakness should be cured
Of its uncompassèd desire;
But she, like a pale lambent fire
Borne by the wind across the glass
Of some still marish-pool, did pass
Out of my reach, within the throat
Of the grey portal, and did float
Along the cloisters tremulously,
Beckoning with backward hand to me
To follow. Then did I ensue
The steps of that fair spirit, through
A maze of many palaces,
Builded, it seem'd, with mockeries
Of gold and jewels, that had long
Lost their glad soul of light among
The cypress-ways of death, — through halls
Of cunning fretwork, where the walls
Were hung with arras, that of old
Had glow'd with blazon'd pearl and gold
And all sweet colours that one sees
In the fair dream-embroideries,
Wrought by no earthly skill to sheen
And shape of beauty that has been,
Fair histories of heroic times
Gone by and tales from poets' rhymes;
But now, alas! the radiant spright
Had from the webwork taken flight
And of their braveries was left
Only a grey and filmy weft
Of shadowy outlines, toss'd about
By the sad airs, like some still rout
Of old-world spectres. And anon,
As I went on and ever on
Betwixt the arras all wind-blown,
Pale shadows of old feasts were thrown
Across the many vistaed ways,
And banner'd pageants did blaze
And wind along the weed-weft aisles.
Anon ghost-music rose the whiles,
Rhythms of erst-glad melody,
Measures, whose soul had been of old
A summer-dream of blue and gold,
But now was paled and blanched to be
Void wails of sorrow unconsoled
And voices of a vague remorse.
And often, as upon the course
Of the fair shade, I took my way,
There started spectres from the grey
Of the pale halls and hemm'd me round
With shadow-dances. From the ground
The memories of things gone by
Aspired before me endlessly,
And all the passion of the past
Rose up around me, wan and ghast
With the long death-swoon, and did mock
My forward longing with a flock
Of jeering phantoms, mute as Fate.
In every nook the wraiths did wait
To spring upon me: from the roofs,
Thick with void ghosts of gems, grey woofs
Of worldly-worn desires did flutter
About my head and there did mutter
From all the caves of echoings
A ceaseless flight of murmurous things,
Wing'd with dead thoughts melodious.
The phantom footfalls did arouse,
As we swept on, a shadow-burst
Of my waste song-shapes, interspersed
With bleeding semblants of the souls
I had outwrought from my own doles
And joys and vestured in a part
Of flesh torn from my bleeding heart.
These all from silence started out
To life and circled me about
With an unceasing rout of ghosts:
And evermore new shadow-hosts
Grew from the mystic gloom, array'd
In trails of shadowy raiment, made
Of all my bygone hopes and fears.

And still, as I did fare, for tears
And weariness nigh past desire,
That lovely shade to me drew nigher
And with soft eyes and finger-sign
Beckon'd me on. Strange lights did shine
Through vault and cloister, and anon
A phosphorescence, blue and wan,
Shimmering across the shadow-steads,
Show'd where great giants raised their heads
Of shadow to the middle air:
And kings and heroes, very fair
And dreadful, sat in ghostly state
Upon vast thrones, stern shapes of Fate,
More awful than a man shall tell,
Majestic and immoveable.
Now on a cloister'd space we came,
Where, like pale pyramids of flame,
Strove up to heaven the shining weeds
Of all most bright and noble deeds
That men in life have dream'd to do;
And in the cloisters, stretching through
From hall to hall, on either hand,
Dim luminous semblances did stand;
And round the cornice, like a frieze,
Were shadow'd out all phantasies,
Gracious and awful, that on earth
The thought of man has given birth
Or dream-built harmony unto,
Death-paled from all their wealth of hue
And all the passion of their youth.
And as I pass'd them by, the ruth
That did possess me at their view
Took shape within me and I knew,
In all that grey and shadowy state
Of dreams and semblants etiolate,
The phantoms of the unreal sheen,
That glorifies the “Might have been.”
Long did we traverse without cease
That awful maze of palaces;
And still, whene'er my soul did faint
For the sad stress of some dead plaint,
The ghost of gladness past, or, pale
With agony, desire did fail,
For all the horror of the task
And the grey terror of that masque
Of shadow-spectres, that for e'er
Did harass me with ghosts of care
And memories,—that fairest shade
The torment of my spright allay'd
With her soft shadowy azure gaze;
And still I strove along the ways
Behind her and could reach her not.

So we for endless years, methought,
Did fare, and never could I win
To fold her form my arms within;
It seem'd to me, the films of air,
That parted us, of crystal were,
As pitiless as diamond,
Forbidding me to come beyond
The line that did our lives divide.
And ever, as the ages died
And no hope came to my desire
Of its fruition, the pale fire
Of longing, that at first had seem'd
But as a flicker, burn'd and beam'd
Within my soul to such a height
Of aspirance, that with its light
My ghostly semblance, grey and wan,
Grew glorious as a star and shone
With splendour of desireful love
And all my being flamed above
The greyness of the lower air.
And that shade, too, the pale and fair,
Put on like splendour of desire
And in like brightness ever higher
Flamed up athwart the shadow-rout
And the pale cloisters, sheathed about
With fire celestial. So there past
Long centuries, until at last
My eyes were open'd from the ring
Of mine own wish and suffering
And to my new-born sight appear'd,
Against the sky-rack grey and weird,
Myriads of souls, that like a fire
Burnt higher up and ever higher
Toward the troubled firmament.
And as I gazed, the air was rent
With a great singing, as it were
The resonance of a great prayer
And joy for a great ransom won;
And with the shock of it upon
The embattled air, the veils were torn
From the ceiled sky and there was borne
Upon my sense a great delight,
A flowering of awful light:
For there did pass across the heaven
A sword of flaming gold, and riven
Were all the glooms from south to north
And the great radiance burst forth
Of midmost heaven upon us all.
And from the firmament did fall
A rain of heavenly fires, that brake
The crystal walls from us and strake
The mists to splendour. Then did we
Each upon each in ecstasy
Rush in the ending of desire,
And in that sacrament of fire,
All grossness of vain hope fell off
From the pure essence and with love
And gladness purged, the perfect spright
Rose up into the realms of light,
Death and its mystery solved at last.
And so with many a song we past
Into the deepest deeps of blue,
A dual soul, that like a dew
Dissolved into the eternity
That rounds all being like a sea.