Collected Works (Vol. III)

LIBER TERTIUS VEL LABORIS ISI Of truth precedes me and informs the task Of the steep ways: I gladden and go on Ready to sing, to answer, or to ask As all may happen : now the stern light shone Vivid across the blackness, and the rock Recedes: the narrow stair is changed and gone And the wide air invades: a mighty shock To my numbed senses void of vital air And to my lyre reverberate to mock With clanging echoes and discordant, where The dome reached up, almost to earth, so high Rolled back the pillars and the walls, aglare With iron justice’ frightful symmetry Blazoned in blood-like flame, gushing from springs Unseen, unguessed, incredible! There fly The dreaded banners of the demon kings In fearful colours, and the vast inane Dome catches music from my mouth, and rings Back iron curses to the blessings vain I pour in desperate fervour from the lyre. So, baffled by the echoes of hell’s pain, Blinded by grisly glamour of hell’s fire, I take my refuge in the solitude And grandeur of that irony of ire, That mockery of mercy: thus I brood Apart, alone, upon the cause of Things And wait those fearful Three. A lifeless mood Stirs my grey being: ay! no passion springs In flowerless halls as these: awhile the mind Wanders on void unprofitable wings No whither : gains new strength at last to find Custom breed sight and hearing: in the hal] The sounds grow clear, the black fires fail to blind. I see the mighty buttress of the wall Lost in its mighty measure: hear again The lyre’s low notes and light distinctly fall A gentle influence in the place of pain. Oh now the central glory of the place Falls splendid on the unbewildered brain, And IT am found contemplating a face More passionless than mortals’: central sits Throned on pure iron, with brass for cara- pace, Minos: and either side of him befits The mighty Khadamanthus throned on gold And canopied with silver : sternly knits [lis brows the awful .lacus, in cold Splendour of justice throned on carven lead ; And o’er his head twin dragons bend and hold A cobra’s hood made of some metal dread Impossible on earth : how calm, how keen Flash their wise eyes, those judges of the dead, In silent state : how eager, how serene Are the broad brows: the heart shrinks up and sinks, Seeing no gallery to slip between And pass those agéd ones—oft a man thinks He faces truth ! I know this hour, alas ! That face to face with naked truth he shrinks. His web of woven fiction may not pass (Though he believes it to be truth) with them Who see his mind as though it were a glass Without a shadow. Yet the ninefold gem And million-facet glory of my song Glittering, made splendid in the diadem Of flashing music shall assoil the wrong, A finer truth interpret. Though the heart And core of music hold a poisonous throng