Unseal, unseal thine eyes!—
Too long her rod
Queen Mab sways o’er their skies
In realms of Nod!—
Their starry majesties
Will fill the night with God.
Unseal, unseal thine eyes!
IDEAL DIVINATION
How I have thought of her,
Her I have never seen!—
Now from a raying air
She, like the Magdalene,
Flowers—a face serene,
Radiant with raven hair.
Now in a balsam scent
Laughs from the stars that gleam;
Naked and redolent,
Bends to me breasts of beam,
Eyes that were made to dream,
Throat that the dimples dent.
Would she were real, ah me!
Would she were real and here!
And no “impossible she”!
But one to draw me near,
Hold me and name me dear!—
But, that can never be!
“Living, each learns to know
Life is not worth its pain;
Loving, each finds a woe
Or, at the end, a chain:
Fardled of hope we strain
Whither no hope may know.
“Life is too credulous
Of time that beckons on.
Memory still serves us thus—
Gauging each coming dawn
By a day dead and gone,
Day that ’s a part of us.”
So says my soul, that ’s mocked
Here of the flesh and held;
Ever rebellion rocked,
Fighting, forever quelled;
Titan-like, fate-compelled,
Yearning to rise, but locked
Supine where torrents pour
Hellward; on crags that, high,
Scarred of the thunder, gore
Heaven.... The vulture’s eye
Swims, and the harpies’ cry
Clangs through the ocean’s roar....