THE RED SEA

Our souls shall be Leviathans

In purple seas of wine

When drunkenness is dead with death,

And drink is all divine;

Learning in those immortal vats

What mortal vineyards mean;

For only in heaven we shall know

How happy we have been.

Like clouds that wallow in the wind

Be free to drift and drink;

Tower without insolence when we rise,

Without surrender sink:

Dreams dizzy and crazy we shall know

And have no need to write

Our blameless blasphemies of praise,

Our nightmares of delight.

For so in such misshapen shape

The vision came to me,

Where such titanian dolphins dark

Roll in a sunset sea:

Dark with dense colours, strange and strong

As terrible true love,

Haloed like fish in phospher light

The holy monsters move.

Measure is here and law, to learn,

When honour rules it so,

To lift the glass and lay it down

Or break the glass and go.

But when the world's New Deluge boils

From the New Noah's vine,

Our souls shall be Leviathans

In sanguine seas of wine.