Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme, Set with a towering press of fantasies, Drop safely down the time, Leaving mine isled self behind it far Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas, (As down the years the splendour voyages From some long ruined and night-submerged star), And in thy subject sovereign's havening heart Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore;Adding its wasteful more To his own overflowing treasury.
So through his river mine shall reach thy sea, Bearing its confluent part;In his pulse mine shall thrill;
And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that's still.
Ah! help, my Daemon that hast served me well!
Not at this last, oh, do not me disgrace!
I faint, I sicken, darkens all my sight, As, poised upon this unprevisioned height, I lift into its place The utmost aery traceried pinnacle.
So; it is builded, the high tenement, - God grant--to mine intent!
Most like a palace of the Occident, Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze, Its mounded blaze, And washed by the sunset's rosy waves, Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves.
Yet wail, my spirits, wail!
So few therein to enter shall prevail!
Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire A dragon baulked, with involuted spire, And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire.
For at the elfin portal hangs a horn Which none can wind aright Save the appointed knight Whose lids the fay-wings brushed when he was born.
All others stray forlorn, Or glimpsing, through the blazoned windows scrolled Receding labyrinths lessening tortuously In half obscurity;With mystic images, inhuman, cold, That flameless torches hold.