I broke my dungeon-sepulchre of dreams;
I climbed the winding stair to palace halls
Where all the air was soothed by incense-streams;
And every sight within those magic walls
Was bright with radiant, opalescent sheen
While lulling on the ear, light music falls
Of such a melody as ne'er has been
Unless by fays on fairy lyres played.
There Pleasure gowned in iridescent green,
Reclines upon her couch with gems inlaid,
And gently beckons with a sinuous arm--
But all the sumptuous excesses fade;
The walls seem dim; the music has no charm,
For Pleasure's Palace is a place of harm.
V
I plunged through rooms of deepest Tyrian dye;
I tore the veils from mysteries aside;
But grinning pleasure ever met mine eye.
In anguished ecstasy of bliss, I cried;
And through the halls, I heard the echo wane
Until the last, most distant answer sighed:
"The spirit of the world is pain, pain, pain--"
Then from the drowsy distance, there did well
A voice as of a witch before her fane,
Soft-muttering, some Heaven-blasting spell:
"The world is all in vain, the merest tool
Of accident, an anteroom to Hell,
A counterfeit but fairly glinting pool--
Snatch all the joy thou canst, thou human fool!"