Classic Poem

I BUILT a house one wondrous night,
From splendid ruins of my soul,
And filled it with the sound and light
That girdles earth from pole to pole.

Its walls of whitest marble there,
A frozen, clustered splendor grew,
And all things beauteous and rare
Gladdened its perfect chambers through.

Strange relics of gone olden days,
Of ancient peoples, times and kings,
In those rare chambers met my gaze,
And gave me vast imaginings.

All glories of earth's richest art,
The painter's thought, the sculptor's dream,
Relic of all the wide world's mart
Blazoned beneath the moonlight's gleam.

The sweetest songs old poets sung,
And life's dread, grimmest tragedies
About these haunted galleries hung,
Enriched with elfin melodies.

For by some magic to me known
I stole of music's saddest art,
From Pan's wild note, Boetian blown,
To Paganini's haunted heart.

Yea, mine alone, all this was mine,
To dwell with splendid dreams alone,
And own a majesty divine,
Amid a marvelous world of stone.

When one strange night I entered in
And found a wondrous spirit there,
That smote the moonlight pale and thin,
With silvern magic sad and rare.

So radiantly beautiful,
It filled my mansion with new light,
And bloomed a warmth across the cool,
Pale, lonely hauntings of the night.

So mystical, it stayed unstirred,
And gazed with awful eyes divine,
Across the human dreams that blurred,
Into this tranced soul of mine.

And ever since with inborn sight,
Like opening of love's inward rose,
Or vast uncurtaining of night,
My heart a mighty sorrow knows:

A Titan sadness, like the sea,
That moans and beats for evermore
To break its manacles, and free
Its spirit from the iron shore.

From night to night the years go on,
The ruined seasons sink and rise;
And still that spirit, never flown,
Looks at me from its wondrous eyes.

And I must drink, undying pain,
The love, the hate, the joy, the smart;
And feel forever, like a chain,
Earth's agony in my haunted heart.