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

Down in a valley of gems in the utmost recess of the Indies,
Flashing with torrents, and vocal with voices of waters that fell,
Of violent waters that fell,
Surging, and seething, and storming like foam from the base of the Andes,
Turbid with gold, with the dust of fine gold in their fire-coloured swell,
Like the gold gleams that cloud the clear amber, and faint with a violet smell,

Glittered the whiteness of limbs, and re-echoed the murmur of voices,
The whiteness of revelling houris, the murmur of voices that sang,
Of musical voices that sang,

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Singing at sound of whose sweetness the wanderer rests and rejoices,
Faint with the opiate swoon of a dream-love, and stung with the pang,
With the terror and love for the serpent which lures the frail dove to his fang.

And I passed on a ledge of the crags and looked over the dizzy dim verges,
Looked on the rounded white flanks and the tangles of moon-coloured hair,
On the storm-tost loose tangles of hair,
On the shoulder's rich swell, and the side's silver sweep, and the breast's snowy surges,
And shuddered, and sickened, and swooned with the giddy sweet wine of despair,
With the drowsy sweet wine of a sadness at things too ineffably fair;

And I sank in among them aswoon with desire to make one of their revels,
But all gone were the swan-like deep breasts; and with whispering serpents I lay,
Amid clammy wet serpents I lay,

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And I weltered all night in their spires, all that night in the valley of devils,
At the sound of their voices aghast, to the slime of their poisons a prey,
Which not all the waves of the ocean shall wash from my spirit away.