University of Virginia Library

Haunted by memories of his first abode,
Man, in the shadows of this earthly road,
Still vindicates the past his legends claim:
Home is for him the semblance of a name,
Although with steadfastness and frighten'd haste—
By need impell'd—he builds him in the waste
Rude inns and falling houses of his hands—
To overlook the melancholy lands
And all his shrouded, sad environment.

When first, from Life Divine, to exile sent,
About his soul inhibited he wrought
A body fitted to the halting thought
Of those who slowly yield to fever'd sleep,
Praying, if long, it may be also deep,
Yet counting scarcely on a true repose,
Since strife in place of peace such slumber knows.
And then, because that frame was frail and cold,
He built him other tenements to hold
His nakedness, lamenting in the gloom—
Tent, temple, palace—ere, in fine, the tomb.
But though the body, warm'd by hearth and bed,
Came through some makeshifts to be comforted,
His haunted soul, mourning the exile's fate.
Still cried aloud that it was desolate.
Moreover, houses of the heart he made—
The House of Love—but Death therein was laid;
The House of Faith—and there a foeman set
Those strange, sad cups which cause us to forget.
Devices also on the walls he wrote
Which uninscribed all nothingness denote
And writ are nothing. Then the House of Pride
High did he raise, and therein magnified
The hopes and works beguiling his distress—
Yet this was cold through utter emptiness.
So passing thence to where some false lights shone,
He raised up Houses of Ambition;
But through the portals and the windows pour'd
The vacant faces of a spectral horde.
And the soul built with shame the House of Lust,
Where hands emblazon:—“Here is also dust;”
And though strange voices—crying: “Come away!”—
Sound in the darkness, to this latest day
The transient buildings round about us rise.
One bond connects them in fantastic wise—
Houses of Sleep they are, to anxious dreams
Devoted—semblances of things and themes,
Dim images derived from otherwhere.
Yea, this is also true: the House of Prayer
Is part and parcel of that mystic trance
Through which our Momus pageantries advance,
And no one wakes of all whom sense enrings.

Only the evidence of secret things
Bears witness in us of a kindling hour;
Through all strange seizures still it speaks with power,
And those most conscious of their sleeping state
Are haply drawing to the waking gate.
Peace on the Houses of their trance! Unfold,
Great Dawn, on tarnish'd eyes, thy wells of gold!
And past all melancholy, clouded lands
Bring tidings of the House not built with hands.