So, again and again, Hath a phantom city thrust to the visionary vault Of inviolate cobalt, dome and dreaming minaret Mosque and gleaming water-tower hazy in a fountain’s jet Or a market’s rising dust; and my lips have cried aloud To see them tremble there, though I knew within my heart They were chiselled out of cloud or carven of thin air; And my fingers clenched my hand, for I wondered if this land Of my stony pilgrimage were a glimmering mirage, And I myself no more than a phantom of the sand. ’But beyond these fading slender cities, many leagues away, Strange brooding mountains lay heaped, crowding range on range In a changing cloudy splendour; and beyond, in lakes of light, As eastward still I staggered, there swam into my sight, More vast and hoar and haggard, shoulders of ice and snow Bounding the heavens low of burnished brass, whereunder The hot plains of Cathay perpetually slumber: Where tawny millions breed in cities without number, Whither, a hill-born thunder, rolling on Tartary With torrents and barb’d lightning, swelleth the yellow river To a tumult of whitening foam and confusèd might That drowns in a single night many a mud-made city; And cities of boats, and frail cities of lath and reed, Are whirled away without pity or set afloat in a pale, Swirling, shallow sea ... and their names seem lost for ever Till a stranger nomad race drive their herds to the sad place Where old sorrows lie forgotten, and raise upon the rotten Level waste another brood to await another flood. ’But I never might attain to this melancholy plain For the mountains rose between; stark in my path they lay Between me and Cathay, through moving mist half-seen. And I knew that they were real, for their drooping folds of cloud Enwrapped me in a shroud, and the air that fell at night From their frozen summits white slid like an ice-blue steel Into my living breast and stilled the heart within As the chill of an old sin that robs a man of rest, Killing all delight in the silence of the night And brooding black above till the heart dare not move But lieth cold and numb ... and the dawn will not come. ’Yet to me a dawn came, new-kindled in cold flame, Flinging the imminence of those inviolate snows On the forest lawns below in a shadow more immense Than their eternal vastness; and a new hope beyond reason, Flamed in my heart’s dark season, dazzled my pallid eyes, Till, when the hot sun soared above the uttermost height, A draught of keen delight into my body was poured, For all that frozen fastness lay flowered with the spring: Her starry blossoms broke beneath my bruisèd feet, And their beauty was so sweet to me I kissed them where they lay; Yea, I bent my weary hips and kissed them with dry lips, Tenderly, only dreading lest their petals delicate Should be broken by my treading, for I lived, I lived again, And my heart would have been broken by a living creature’s pain, So I kissed them for a token of my joy in their new birth,