Classic Poem

Prayerless from the sacred well,
From Castaly and Hippocrene,
He drank, and on the verge of hell
Slept, and forgot where he had been,
When he returned to common day,
Baptized by Hecate!

He was the aeronaut who flew
Through skies becoming black like night,
Above the wrack and mountain range:
Saw his own shadow on the white
Cloud-world below that dazed his sight,
And with his lapsing sense scarce knew
That moving phantom, phantom strange,
Was his own shadow. It was he
Who lay in fever frenziedly,
And chased the printed flowers that shed
A mad confusion round his bed,
Until at last they changed and past
Into vermin round the dead.