Myth and Romance Part 7

And, fonder still, we hoped to find the sweet Immortal presence, Love; the bird Delight Beside her; and, eyed with sidereal night, Faith, like a lion, fawning at her feet.

IV

But, scorched and barren, in its arid well, We found our dreams' forgotten fountain-head; And by black, bitter waters, crushed and dead, Among wild weeds, Truth's trampled asphodel.

V

And side by side with pallid Doubt and Pain, Not Love, but Grief did meet us there: afar We saw her, like a melancholy star, Or pensive moon, move towards us o'er the plain.

VI

Sweet was her face as song that sings of home; And filled our hearts with vague, suggestive spells Of pathos, as sad ocean fills its sh.e.l.ls With sympathetic moanings of its foam.

VII

She raised one hand and pointed silently, Then pa.s.sed; her eyes, gaunt with a thirst unslaked, Were worlds of woe, where tears in torrents ached, Yet never fell. And like a winter sea,--

VIII

Whose caverned crags are haunts of wreck and wrath, That house the condor pinions of the storm,-- My soul replied; and, weeping, arm in arm, To'ards those dim hills, by that appointed path,

IX

We turned and went. Arrived, we did discern How Beauty beckoned, white 'mid miles of flowers, Through which, behold, the amaranthine Hours Like maidens went each holding up an urn;

X

Wherein, it seemed--drained from long chalices Of those slim flow'rs--they bore mysterious wine; A poppied vintage, full of sleep divine And pale forgetting of all miseries.

XI

Then to my soul I said, "No longer weep.

Come, let us drink; for hateful is the sky, And earth is full of care, and life's a lie.

So let us drink; yea, let us drink and sleep."

XII

Then from their br.i.m.m.i.n.g urns we drank sweet must, While, all around us, rose-crowned faces laughed Into our eyes; but hardly had we quaffed When, one by one, these crumbled into dust.

XIII

And league on league the eminence of blooms, That flashed and billowed like a summer sea, Rolled out a waste of thorns and tombs; where bee And b.u.t.terfly and bird hung dead in looms

XIV

Of worm and spider. And through tomb and brier, A thin wind, parched with thirsty dust and sand, Went wailing as if mourning some lost land Of perished empire, Babylon or Tyre.

XV

Long, long with blistered feet we wandered in That land of ruins, through whose sky of bra.s.s Hate's Harpy shrieked; and in whose iron gra.s.s The Hydra hissed of undestroyable Sin.

XVI

And there at last, behold, the House of Doom,-- Red, as if h.e.l.l had glared it into life, Blood-red, and howling with incessant strife,-- With burning battlements, towered in the gloom.

XVII

And throned within sat Darkness.--Who might gaze Upon that form, that threatening presence there, Crowned with the flickering corpse-lights of Despair, And yet escape sans madness and amaze?

XVIII

And we had hoped to find among these hills The House of Beauty!--Curst, yea, thrice accurst, The hope that lures one on from last to first With vain illusions that no time fulfills!

XIX

Why will we struggle to attain, and strive, When all we gain is but an empty dream?-- Better, unto my thinking, doth it seem To end it all and let who will survive;