showering in my ears, and, by the touchOf scent, not far from roses. Turning round
I saw an arbour with a drooping roof
Of trellis vines, and bells, and larger blooms,
Like floral censers swinging light in air;
Before its wreathed doorway, on a mound
Of moss, was spread a feast of summer fruits,
Which, nearer seen, seem’d refuse of a meal
By angel tasted or our Mother Eve;
For empty shells were scattered on the grass,
And grape stalks but half bare, and remnants more,
Sweet smelling, whose pure kinds I could not know.
Still was more plenty than the fabled horn
Thrice emptied could pour forth, at banqueting
For Proserpine return’d to her own fields,
Where the white heifers low. And appetite
More yearning than on earth I ever felt
Growing within, I ate deliciously;
And, after not long, thirsted, for thereby
Stood a cool vessel of transparent juice
Sipp’d by the wander’d bee, the which I took,
And, pledging all the mortals of the world,
And all the dead whose names are in our lips,
Drank. That full draught is parent of my theme.
No Asian poppy nor elixir fine
Of the soon fading jealous Caliphat,
No poison gender’d in close monkish cell
To thin the scarlet conclave of old men,
Could so have rapt unwilling life away.
Among the fragrant husks and berries crush’d,
Upon the grass I struggled hard against
The domineering potion; but in vain:
The cloudy swoon came on, and down I sunk
Like a Silenus on an antique vase.
How long I slumber’d ’tis a chance to guess.
When sense of life return’d, I started up
As if with wings; but the fair trees were gone,
The mossy mound and arbour were no more:
I look’d around upon the carved sides
Of an old sanctuary with roof august,
Builded so high, it seem’d that filmed clouds
Might spread beneath, as o’er the stars of heaven;
So old the place was, I remember’d none
The like upon the earth: what I had seen
Of grey cathedrals, buttress’d walls, rent towers,
The superannuations of sunk realms,
Or Nature’s rocks toil’d hard in waves and winds,
Seem’d but the faulture of decrepit things
To that eternal domed monument.
Upon the marble at my feet there lay
Store of strange vessels and large draperies,
Which needs had been of dyed asbestos wove,
Or in that place the moth could not corrupt,
So white the linen, so, in some, distinct
Ran imageries from a sombre loom.
All in a mingled heap confus’d there lay
Robes, golden tongs, censer and chafing dish,
Girdles, and chains, and holy jewelries.
Turning from these with awe, once more I rais’d
My eyes to fathom the space every way;
The embossed roof, the silent massy range
Of columns north and south, ending in mist
Of nothing, then to eastward, where black gates
Were shut against the sunrise evermore.
Then to the west I look’d, and saw far off
An image, huge of feature as a cloud,
At level of whose feet an altar slept,
To be approach’d on either side by steps,
And marble balustrade, and patient travail
To count with toil the innumerable degrees.
Towards the altar sober paced I went,
Repressing haste, as too unholy there;
And, coming nearer, saw beside the shrine
One minist’ring; and there arose a flame.
When in mid May the sickening East wind
Shifts sudden to the south, the small warm rain
Melts out the frozen incense from all flowers,
And fills the air with so much pleasant health
That even the dying man forgets his shroud;
Even so that lofty sacrificial fire,
Sending forth Maian incense, spread around
Forgetfulness of everything but bliss,
And clouded all the altar with soft smoke,
From whose white fragrant curtains thus I heard
Language pronounc’d: ‘If thou canst not ascend
‘These steps, die on that marble where thou art.
‘Thy flesh, near cousin to the common dust,
‘Will parch for lack of nutriment thy bones
‘Will wither in few years, and vanish so
‘That not the quickest eye could find a grain
‘Of what thou now art on that pavement cold.
‘The sands of thy short life are spent this hour,
‘And no hand in the universe can turn
‘Thy hourglass, if these gummed leaves be burnt
‘Ere thou canst mount up these immortal steps.’
I heard, I look’d: two senses both at once,
So fine, so subtle, felt the tyranny
Of that fierce threat and the hard task proposed.
Prodigious seem’d the toil, the leaves were yet
Burning when suddenly a palsied chill
Struck from the paved level up my limbs,
And was ascending quick to put cold grasp
Upon those streams that pulse beside the throat:
I shriek’d; and the sharp anguish of my shriek
Stung my own ears I strove hard to escape
The numbness; strove to gain the lowest step.
Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold
Grew stifling, suffocating, at the heart;
And when I clasp’d my hands I felt them not.
One minute before death, my iced foot touch’d
The lowest stair; and as it touch’d, life seem’d
To pour in at the toes: I mounted up,
As once fair angels on a ladder flew
From the green turf to Heaven. ‘Holy Power,’
Cried I, approaching near the horned shrine,
‘What am I
