How lovely visions ’guiled his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn, Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn; Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze; The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his wasted days; How every high heroic Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air, Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair; How, dower’d with heritage of brain, whose might has split the solar ray, His rest is grossest coarsest earth, a crown of gold on brow of clay; This House whose frame be flesh and bone, mortar’d with blood and faced with skin, The home of sickness, dolours, age; unclean without, impure within: Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom, the chambers haunted by the Ghost, Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade stronger than all the heav’nly host. This tube, an enigmatic pipe, whose end was laid before begun, That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks; —puzzle, machine, automaton; The first of Pots the Potter made by Chrysorrhoas’ blue-green wave;* Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave! * The Abana, River of Damascus. How Life is dim, unreal, vain, like scenes that round the drunkard reel; How “Being” meaneth not to be; to see and hear, smell, taste and feel. A drop in Ocean’s boundless tide, unfathom’d waste of agony; Where millions live their horrid lives by making other millions die. How with a heart that would through love to Universal Love aspire, Man woos infernal chance to smite, as Min’arets draw the Thunder-fire. How Earth on Earth builds tow’er and wall, to crumble at a touch of Time; How Earth on Earth from Shînar-plain the heights of Heaven fain would climb. How short this Life, how long withal; how false its weal, how true its woes, This fever-fit with paroxysms to mark its opening and its close. Ah! gay the day with shine of sun, and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng Met on the River-bank to play, when I was young, when I was young: Such general joy could never fade; and yet the chilling whisper came One face had paled, one form had failed; had fled the bank, had swum the stream; Still revellers danced, and sang, and trod the hither bank of Time’s deep tide, Still one by one they left and fared to the far misty thither side; And now the last hath slipt away yon drear Death-desert to explore, And now one Pilgrim worn and lorn still lingers on the lonely shore. Yes, Life in youth-tide standeth still; in manhood streameth soft and slow; See, as it nears the ’abysmal goal how fleet the waters flash and flow! And Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see drop like the leaves in windy Fall; But ours, our own, are ruined worlds, a globe collapst, last end of all.