Classic Poem

Chimaera writhes beside the tragic flame
of the old hearth: her starting jaws proclaim,
a silent cry, the craven world's attaint.
Her vans that beat against a hard constraint
leaps, as the coals jet in a moment-spasm:
yet their taut ribs hurt not the serpent chasm
of shade, that slips swift to its absent den,
to settle, grimlier, at her throat again.
And, starward were their prison-roof increas'd,
no sun that bathes him for a dewy east
would light her mail, above the tainted air
a meteor-dazzling gem, but the red flare
kindle disastrous on our burning eyes
from where the sullen embers agonize,
once the heart's rose-flusht dream of living gold.
Therefore her croup, thro' many a lapsing fold,
is bound into the iron's night, to check
the frenzy that contorts her charging neck:
her life is flitting with the fitful red
splashing her flank as 'twere her courage bled
to curdle with the void, whose metal-cold
shall seal her gone, a block no art shall mould.
And now the shining tongues that sprang to lick
the obscene blackness in are tarnisht thick:
insidiously thro' each blank pane the dark
invades from space, vast cemetery: one spark
flies up, the lessen'd ghost of flame: her flight
stiffens, and is a settled piece of night.