I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,   
And my heart ever gazes on the depth   
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed   
In charnels and on coffins, where black death   
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings   
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,   
Thy messenger, to render up the tale   
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,   
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
Like an inspired and desperate alchemist   
Staking his very life on some dark hope,   
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks   
With my most innocent love, until strange tears   
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmèd night   
To render up thy charge: and, tho’ ne’er yet   
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,   
Enough from incommunicable dream,   
And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,
Has shone within me, that serenely now   
And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre   
Suspended in a solitary dome   
Of some mysterious and deserted fane

Labels: passages