TO REVERY.

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,

What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose,

What marts of crystal, for the eyes of Thought

Hast builded on what Islands of Repose!

Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian,

Or piled Ionic, colonnading heights

That loom above long burst of mythic seas:

Vast gynaeceums of carnelian;

Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights,

Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze.

Where bulbous domes of coruscating ore

Cloud — like convulsive sunsets — lands that dream,

Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar,

Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream.

Tempestuous architecture-revelries;

Built melodies of marble or clear glass;

Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thought

In misty attitudes, whose majesties

Feed full the pleasure as those beauties pass

To pale extinctions which are beauty fraught.

On rebeck and on rose in plinths of spars,

On glimmering solitudes of flower and stone,

A twilight-glow swoons settled, burned with stars,

Deep violet dusk developing nor done.

Where float fair nacreous shapes like deities,—

Existences of glory musical,—

‘ Round whose warm hair twist fillets’ coiling gold,

Their limbs Olympian lovely, and their eyes

Dark oblique fervors; and most languorous tall

In woven white with girdling gold threefold.

There darkling the consummate vintage sleeps,—

Lethe-nepenthes for Earth-agony,—

In sealed amphorae some Sybil keeps,

World-old, forever cellared secretly.

A wine of Xeres or of Syracuse?

A fierce Falernian?— Ah! no vile Sabine!—

A stol'n ambrosia of what olden god?

Whose bubbled rubies maiden feet did bruise

From crusted vats of vintage rich, I ween,

Vivacious purple of some Samian sod.

Oh, for the cold conclusion of one draught!

Elysian ecstacy of classic earth!—

Where heroes warred with gods and where gods laughed

In eyes of mortal brown, a lusty mirth

Of deity delirious with desire:

Where danced the sacrifice to horned shrines,

And splashed the full libation blue as blood.—

Oh, to be drunk with dreaming! to inspire

The very soul of beauty whence it shines

Too lost for utterance yet understood!

In cogitation of what verdurous shades,

Dull-droning quietudes where wild-bees lolled

Suck, lulled in pulpy lilies of the glades,

Barbaric-smothered with the kerneled gold:

Teased by some torso of the golden age,

Nude breasts of Cytherea, famous fair,

Uncestus'd, yet suggestive of what loves

Immortal! yearn enamoured; or to rage

With sun-burnt Poesy whose throat breathes bare

O'er leopard skins and flute among her groves.