Then I: 'O haggard one, say from what ghostly zone
Of thwarted destinies or torment hast thou come?
Tell me thy race and name!' And he, with veiled face:
'I have neither name nor race, but I have travelled far,
A timeless avatar of never-ending dooms,
Out of those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired star
In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar...
Once in a lonely dawn my eager spirit fared
By ways that no men dared unto a desert land,
Where, on a sullen strand, a mouldering city, vast