Collected Works (Vol. I)

104 MYSTERIES: LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC Yet to the quivering brain three goodly oifts The cruelty of Pluto and his might In the abyss bestow’: Change, foresight, fear. The pageant whirls and boils3 Restricted not by space and time, my dream Tloresees the doom of Fate ; My spirit wrestles in the Dream-King’s toils Always in vain, and Ilope’s forerunners evleam Alway one step too late. Not as when sunlight strikes the counter- pane ; Half wakening, sleep rolls back her iron wave, And dawn brings blithesomeness ; Not as wher opiates lull the tortured brain And sprinkle lotus on the drowsy grave Of earth’s old bitterness ; But as when consciousness half rouses up And hurls back all the gibbering harpy crowd 3 And sleep’s draught deepeneth, And all the furies of hell’s belly sup In the brain’s palaces, and chant aloud Songs that foretaste of Death. Maddened, the brain breaks* from beneath the goad, Flings off again the foe, and from its hell Brings for a moment peace, Till weariness and her infernal load Of phantom memory-shapes return to quell The shaken fortresses. Till nature reassert her empery, And the full tide of wakefulness at last Foam on the shore of sleep To beat the white cliffs of reality In vain, because their windy strength is past, And only memories weep. Why is the Finite real? And that world So larger, so more beautiful and fleet, So free, so exquisite, The world of dreams and impearled With solitary shaft of Truth? O children of the Night, shadows, not Too sweet, Are your wide realms for our philoso- phers, Who must in hard gray balance-shackles bind The essence of all thought : No sorrier sexton in a grave inters The nobler children of a poet’s mind Of wine and gold well wrought. By the poor sense of touch they judge that this Or that is real or not. Have they divined This simplest spirit-bond, The joy of some bad woman’s deadly kiss ; The thought-flash that well tunes a lover’s mind Seas and gray gulfs beyond? So that which is impalpable to touch, They judge by touch; the viewless they decide By sight; their logic fails, Their jarring jargon jingles—even such An empty brazen pot—wise men deride The clouds that mimic whales. My world shall be my dreams. Religion there And duty may disturb me not at all; Nor doubts, nor fear of death. I straddle on no haggard ghostly mare ; Yea, through my God, I have leapt o’er a wall ! (As poet David saith.) The wall that ever girds Earth’s thought with brass Is all a silver path my feet beneath, And o’er its level sward