Lash of the Lord of Heaven and bitter scourge of sin. O beautiful, O bright! my tired sinews strained To this torch that flared and waned as a watery planet gloweth And waneth in the night when a calm sea floweth Under a misty sky spread with the tattered veils Of rapid cloud driven over the deeps of heaven By winds that range too high to sweep the languid sails. On through the frozen night, like a blind moth flying With battered wing and bruisèd bloom into a light, I dragged my ragged limbs, cared not if I were dying, Knew not if I were dead, where cavernous crevasses, And stony desperate passes snared, waylaid my tread: In the roar of broken boulders split from rocky shoulders, In the thunder of snow sliding, or under the appalling Rending of glacier ice or hoarse cataracts falling: And I knew not what could save me but the unholy guiding That some demon gave me. Thrice I fell, and thrice In torrents of blue ice-water slipp’d and was toss’d Like a dead leaf, or a ghost Harried by thin bufferings of wind Downward to Tartarus at daybreak, Downward to the regions of the lost.... But the rushing waters ceased, and the bitter wind fell: How I cannot tell, unless that I had come To the hollow heart of the storm where the wind is dumb; And there my gelid blood thawed, glowed, and grew warm, While a black-hooded form caught at my arm, and stayed And held me as I swayed, until, at last, I saw In a strange unworldly awe, at the gate of light I stood: And I entered, alone.... ’Behold a cavern of stone carven, and in the midst A brazier that hissed with tongued flames, leaping Over whitened embers of gummy frankincense, Into a fume of dense and fragrant vapour, creeping Over the roof to spread a milky coverlet Softer than the woof of webby spider’s net. But never spider yet spun a more delicate wonder Than that which hung thereunder, drooping fold on fold, Silks that glowed with fire of tawny Oxus gold, Richer than ever flowed from the eager fancy of man In his vain desire for beauty that endures: And on the floor were spread by many a heaped daiwan Carpets of Kurdistan, cured skins, and water-ewers Encrusted with such gems as emperors of Hind (Swart conquerors, long dead) sought for their diadems.