Phantasmagoria :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lying awake at night I sometimes hear a pealing
As of monstrous organs booming far away,
Bursts of spheric music vaguely stealing
'Mong the stars, and clouds, and waves at play;
Surging upward in a grand victorious
Triumph, ebbing in a silver stream,
Softly, softly soars and sinks the glorious
Music of a dream.

Then anon in lisping soft orchestral numbers
Comes the thrill of many a pleading violin,
Pulsing amorously through my slumbers,
Gittern, harp, and lute, and mandolin,
Kissing all the sense with soft insistance
Steals the spirit with a kiss of peace,
As love's wild entreaties whelm resistance,
Charms cold fear to cease.

With the chequered moonlight through the window sprinkling
Silver notes with silver rays, they sweetly fall
In my ear with drowsy magic tinkling,
Like young spirits' voices keen and small:
Meanwhile through their pauses, flute-like, mellow,
On the voices of the shifting gale,
I, love-tossed upon my restless pillow,
Hear the nightingale.

Still the mystic music soars and sinks and lingers,
Hovering in the chamber, tremulous in the air,
As if flung from angels' moving fingers
From live lute-strings in the turret stair,
Sweeping through the house from roof to basement,
Stealing faintly down the corridor,
Oozing through the closed and barred-up casement,
Entering the door.

Rolling to and fro with rhythmic undulations,
Coming in quick gusts and pants of passionate breath,
Penetrating me with keen vibrations,
Vivid as the final pang of death,
Only sweet as love's delicious languor,
Filling heart and breast with fiery swoon,
Grief, desire, and agony, and anger,
'Neath the mystic moon.

What is it that thrills me? What is it that bears me
All alone o'er seas to an enchanted isle,
Where a fairy lady softly snares me
In her amber hairs and in her smile,
Swathes me in white arms and threads all golden,
In the network of a silken spell,
To her white warm bosom closely holden.
In a pearly shell?

Beams of sunlight, as through sea-waves green, come shattered
Through the fair frail mother o'pearl prismatic walls,
And a shower of brilliant rainbows scattered
O'er her limbs and glorious tresses falls,
Flecks with blots of red her marble bosom,
Bars with streaks of green each pale white limb,
As the ruinous leaves of scarlet blossom
Rained on waters dim.

She is Morgan, she is Vivian, she is Venus,
And I lie bewitched, asleep in her rich grot;
Sighs and soft caresses pass between us,
Her lips coral kisses weary not,
For upon the opal pavement boiling
An enchanted potion bubbles up,
Red wine, mad as wildfire, burning, broiling
In a diamond cup.

Thin the cup, but hewn from rocks of solid jewel,
Lucent as a crystal, thinner than a shell,
And the liquor's flame is love's own fuel
Drawn directly from his fiery well;
From the lips, with languid dreams in legion,
It flies upward straight into the brain,
Flooding all its gold and glorious region
With delicious pain.

Then away, the shell is swept, and whirled, and lifted
Far upon a moving ocean's breast afloat,
On the changing tides and currents drifted,
Rocking, late a grotto now a boat.
Past the arching fan-shaped stern back-gazing,
O'er the waters' undulating calm,
I can see the magic isle fast hazing
With its feathery palm.

Swallowed up in ruddy wastes of twilight, duller
Grow the tufted trees, a pale phantasmal show,
Ghostly shapes evanished in a mist of colour,
Soft absorbed into the crimson glow,
Glow of washing waves and sky flame-kindling
With eve's wild white star upon its breast,
A fast-melting vision, a dream dwindling
In the golden west.

Then below the keel the ripples gurgle sweetly,
Plash, and break, and sigh with silken rustling sound;
And the fine prow cuts the waters fleetly,
Running over many a purple sound,
Up cool creeks and coves on waves melodious,
Winding inlets to new magic lands,
Paved with glittering gravel, cool, commodious,
Banked will silver sands.

There a palace tall of tower, and spire, and steeple,
Soaring to the stars with terrace, dome, and roof
Waits us, thronged with fair enchanted people
Clad in gold and silver, tissue and woof;
There 'neath lofty walls that shine upstanding
O'er our head with tiers of jewels rare,
We glide onward to a marble landing
With a crystal stair.

Far into the heart of that unmeasured mansion
Labyrinthine with its aisles of gold and brass,
Wonderstruck by infinite expansion
We sail on by smooth canals of glass,
Till we reach that stair, and stay the galley,
And endless rows of mailéd guards between,
Upward, on, through many a flaming alley
Pass, a king and queen.

There the hall is thronged with forms, and hung with banners
Sweeping with silk fringe our hair beneath the door,
Lofty windows as of faëry manors
Stain with gorgeous beams the walls and floor.
All aflame with blue and rich vermilion
Shakes the air, a fire-impregnate zone.
There they seat us 'neath a starred pavilion
On a purple throne.

Aug. 7th, 1886.