There is no room in any town (he said) To house the towering hugeness of my dream. It straitens me to sleep in any bed Whose foot is nearer than the night's extreme. There is too much of solitude in crowds For one who has been where constellations teem, Where boulders meet with boulders, and the clouds And hills convene; who has talked at evening With mountains clad in many-colored shrouds. Men pity me for the scant gold I bring: Unguessed within my heart the solar glare On monstrous gems that lit my journeying. They deem the desert flowerless and bare, Who have not seen above their heads unfold The vast, inverted lotus of blue air; Nor know what Flanging Gardens I behold With half-shut eyes between the earth and moon In topless iridescent tiers unrolled. For them, the planted fields, their veriest boon; For me, the verdure of inviolate grass In far mirages vanishing at noon. For them, the mellowed strings, the strident brass, The cry of love, the clangor of great horns, The thunder-burdened ways where thousands pass. For me, the silence welling from dark urns, From fountains past the utmost world and son... To overflow some day the desert bourns ... And take the sounding cities one by one.

This is enchanted ground Whereto the nymphs are bound; Where the hoar oaks maintain, While seasons mount or wane, Their ghostly satyrs, dim and undispelled. It is a place fulfilled and circled round With fabled years and presences of Eld. These things have been before, And these are things forevermore to be; And he and I and she, Inseparate as of yore, Are celebrants of some old mystery. Under the warm blue skies The flickering butterflies, Dancing with their frail shadows, poise and pass. Now, with the earth for board, The bread is eaten and the wine is poured; While she, the twice-adored, Between us lies on the pale autumn grass. Thus has she lain before, And thus we two have watched her reverently; More beautiful, and more Mysterious for her body's nudity. Full-burdened with the culminating year, The heavens and earth are mute; Till on a fitful wind we seem to hear Some fainting murmur of a broken flute. Adown the hillside steep and sere The laurels bear their ancient leaves and fruit. These things have happened even thus of yore, These things are part of all futurity; And she and I and he, Returning as before, Participate in some unfinished mystery. Her hair, between my shoulder and the sun, Is turned to iridescent fire and gold: A witch's web, whereon Wild memories are spun, And magical delight and sleep unfold Beyond the world where Anteros is lord. It is the hour of mystical accord, Of respite, and release From all that hampers us, from all that frets, And from the vanity of all regrets. where grape and laurel twine, One more we drink the Dionysian wine, Ringed with the last horizon that is Greece.

The madman speaks. The night is my sister. Do you know it? Hush. The night is my sister. Always she comes to seek and visit me And to make sweet my sadness. If you deny it, I’ll kill you. I have no longer Any family save her… My promised bride> She has left me and has gone To live in another planet, Far, very far. What do you wish? Poor child! They carried her away by violence. She had black eyes Surrounded by dark violet circles That were the twin of two abysses Crowned with ivies: Abysses deep, unfathomably deep, From which the stars peered forth. The night…I have already told you? Doubt it not, The night is my sister. See you not that she, like me, is clad in mourning? When the night knew my bride Had gone for ever, when she knew that I Was perishing of grief, She came and found my dwelling-place. “Come, friend,” She said to me, “come, poet.” Because I am a poet…What! You do not know? You do not know, perhaps, my poem Made up of laughters and of tears? a song That bears her name? No? It is best, is best! Ah! I have told you - What have I told you? Yes, yes, that the night, So sad and pale, The n night so sad and so benign, Is my sister. See you not that she, like me is clad in mourning? And see you not the stars that she possesses Like me? If you should look into my soul You will behold in the thick shadow A swarm of luminous bees, A splendor for the blaze of some bright fire. Our origin is taken from the night Whence I draw light and darkness. Blackness of mourning and the dayspring’s gold, Witness of Annunciation and Chimera. Today I am happy. If you will not repeat it To anyone, I’ll tell you why my sorrow Is changed into this shining jubilation. You will not tell? Then listen, then so be in: Because the night will come in the end to bear me To the far planet Where my bride lives; because at last I shall see in her eyes, in her serene Eyes, oh! the sad Eyes, oh! the sweet and tranquil Eyes encircled By violet - (And the madman laughs and weeps, while a nun prays, running a rosary between her fingers.) Twelve slow tolling of a bell are given.

Surely these muted days are one with days remembered, This necromantic sun is an evocation Of suns whereunder we have walked before: For when I see the peach-trees Flame-colored and far off Where the blueness of the air has crept among them, The love I feel today Somehow resumes the bygone flames and shadows, The vanished incommunicable moods And fugitive lost colors Of the love I felt for you in autumns past.