VIII.

VANISHING visions, whose lineaments steal into slumbers,

Loosened the lids of the sight the night that encumbers;

Secretly, sweetly with fingers of fog that were slow,

Slow as a song that mysterious

Passions the soul, till delirious,

Wrapped in mad melody mastering the uttermost woe,

Deep to the innermost deep it is shaken

Ruffled and rippled and tossed,

Tantalized, terrorized, cursed with a thirst that, unslaken,

Debauches with eyes that burn stolid, yet only shall waken

With infinite scorn of the cost

If no note of the rhapsody's lost.

Oh, for the music of moonbeams that master and sweep

Chords of the resonant deep!

Smiting loud lyres of Night, sonorous as fire,

Leap fluttering fingers of vanquishing flash and of flake

Fain at each firmament-universe-instrument star-strung.

Vibrating-vestured in garments of woven desire,

Stoop to me, breathe on me, smile on me, waver, "Awake!

From waking to sleeping, to silence from manifold clamor,

To revelous regions of multiform glamour!"

Murmur and whisper "Awake!"

Oh, necromance banquets by fountains of fairy, the spar-sprung!

Oh, sorcerous beauties and wonders of wizards! oh take

The millions of morning-spun gleams,

All glitters of galloping streams,

The glimmer the gasp the clutch and the grasp,

That colorless crystals and virtuous jewels

As spasmodic fuels

Cuddle and huddle and clasp:

The wrinkle and crinkle of scintillant heat in white metals;

The quiver of terrible gold and the pearly

Lithe brilliance of soft, holy petals,

Of slender, sad blossoms, tumultuous tossed crispy and curly

In shadowy reaches of violet dark;

The burn of the stars and the spark

Fragile of foams that are fluted, to make

One cordial of dreams

To drink and to sink

Deep, deep into dreams nor awake.