Classic Poem

Darkling I steal, and with hushed footsteps slow
Thread the dim palace, between painted walls
And pillared aisles and perfumed plants a row.
Whither? O, where? Keen as a sword edge falls
Light from yon slender portal. Onward still
I am lured spell-bound through the noiseless halls.
Still onward. Sense and thought and shrinking will,
Compelled by unresistible control,
Grope toward yon shining slit that sharp and chill
Gleams like the lode-star of my shuddering soul.
Yet would I fain draw back: all is so dark,
So ominously tranquil; and the goal
Toward which I tread is but one steady spark,
Clearing the dream-drowned twilight terrible.
What noise? Nay startle not. The watch-dogs bark
Far off in farm-yards where men slumber well.
Here stillness broods; save when a cricket chirrs,
Or wheeling on slant wing the black bat fell
Utters her thin shrill scream. No night wind stirs
The sleeping foliage of these stately bays.
Forward I venture. On warm silky furs
My feet fall muffled now; and now I raise
The latchet of the door that stands ajar.
Light floods but dazzles not my frozen gaze.
What is within I reckon. Near and far,
Things small and great, sights wonderful and strange,
Alike in equal vision, on that bar
Of blackness standing, with fixed eyes I range.
It is a narrow room: walls high and straight
Enclose it. Yonder lamps that counterchange
Shadow with lustre, scarce can penetrate
The fretwork of high rafters rough with gold.
The lamps are silver: Satyrs love-elate
Upraising cressets; phallic horns that hold
Creamed essence, amber oil. From gloom profound
Lean shapes of mural heroes, lovers old,
Glimmering with shapes auroral on the ground
Of ebon blackness. Hylas, Hyacinth,
And heaven-rapt Ganymede: I know them: crowned
With lilies dew-bedrenched, upon a plinth
Of jasper droops Uranian Love, a god
Wrought out of bruised bronze for some labyrinth
Of Academic grove where sages trod:
Bare, breathless, in his beauty, here love smiled,
Making more dim the ghostly solitude.
Midward the chamber was a table piled
With fruit and flowers. Thereon there blazed a cup,
Carven of sardonyx, where Maenads wild
With wine and laughter, shrieking, seemed to sup
The blood of mangled Pentheus. It was full
Of dark Falerian; the draught bubbling up
From tawny into crimson, rich and cool,
Glowed in the bowl untasted. Wreaths of rose,
Pure as little shepherd lads in Paestum pull,
Circled two sculptured murrhine cups; but those
Were void, no wine-spilth made their wreaths more red.
Then was I ware how, neath the flaming rows
Of cressets, a flat ivory couch was spread.
Smooth Tyrian silks and gauzes hyaline
Clung draped with jewelled buckles to the bed.
Thereon lay stretched a fair nude form supine;
An alabaster youth serenely laid
In slumber. Honey-pale and sleek and fine
Were all his limbs: and o'er his breast there played
The lambent smiles of lamplight. But a pool
Of blood, low down, along the pavement strayed.
There, where blue cups of lotus lilies cool
With reeds into mosaic rings were blent,
The black blood grew and curdled; for the wool
Whereon his cloudy curls were pillowed, sent
Thick drops slow-dripping down the ivory rim;
Yet was the raiment ruffled not nor rent.
In trance I crept, and closer gazed at him.
Ah me! from side to side his throat was gashed
With some keen blade; and every noble limb
With marks of crispèd fingers marred and lashed,
Told the fierce strain of tyrannous lust that here
Life's crystal vase of youth divine had dashed.
It is enough. Those glazed eyes, wide and clear;
Those lips by forceful kisses bruised, that cheek
Whereon foul teeth-dints blackened; the tense fear
Of that white innocent forehead;—vain and weak
Are words, unutterably weak and vain,
To paint how madly eloquent, how meek
Were those mute signs of dire soul-shattering pain.