Classic Poem

There is a Land no mortal chart hath noted,
Lying remote, a sunset Land of Ease, —
Whereto the voyager is softly floated
Across Lethean seas.

It is a region over whose existence
The shades of doubt and disbelief are cast;
A Realm that lies, obscured by night and distance,
Vague, visionary, vast;

Whereof I haste to bring, O friends and strangers!
Some brief account; for I am travel worn;
But lately reaching, after many dangers,
The margins of the morn.

The mountains lift their summits, dim and hoary,
In melancholy grandeur, far away:
And all things wear a pale and languid glory,
Unknown to brazen day.

There ancient Night, her starry rule sustaining,
Sways her mild sceptre over sea and land;
Amid her loyal court serenely reigning,
With Peace aTher right hand;

And Sleep, her slave, dusky and huge as Dagon,
Before her, prone and powerless as the dead,
One arm still round his purple-stained flagon,
And one beneath his head.

There all strange beauties that rapt Fancy renders,
Enchant the sense: from cliffs that nod around,
White cataracts, moonstruck with golden splendors,
Drop down without a sound;

Still meadows, where nocturnal blooms are growing,
Languid with love, lie lapt in slumbrous calm,
Wooed by enamored winds so faintly blowing
From groves of drooping palm.

By winding creek and sedgy-margined river,
The heavy-headed poppies doze, and doze;
Narcotic sweetness fills the air forever,
And all things love repose.

And round the land a mighty wall arises,
Upon whose gates eternal starlight gleams,
Showing a legend with antique devices
Inwrought: The L AND OF D REAMS .

And by the portals wait a motley legion,
Who lead you onward through delightful bowers
Into the fair recesses of the region,
To beds of lotus flowers.

Then music rises, silver-cadenced, holy,
What time on elfin instruments they play
Some low and Lydian melody, that slowly
Steals Sorrow's soul away!

Or else you skim lone-lakes in wizard barges,
By slow and measured motion borne along,
And hear at intervals, blown from the marges,
The Fairies' choral song.

There all night long, upon the purple highlands,
The drowsy sentinels of ghostly towers
Call to each other, in the starry silence,
The measure of the hours.

But by no swing of rhyme may I endeavor
The music of those mellow bells to show,
Which to those sleepy-sounding voices ever
Did chime responses low;

Most like that delicate and airy ringing,
Of which the bulbul-hearted Hafiz tells,
When, with the zephyr's fluctuation swinging,
The lilies shake their bells.

There clear reflections of the days departed,
Like weird auroras, flush the silent sky,
And phantoms of the lost, the tender-hearted,
Embrace us lovingly.

There haggard Anguish peacefully reposes,
And darling arms unhappy Love enfold;
Despair lies down upon a bed of roses,
And Penury wades in gold!

The mother feels again upon her bosom
The tender pressure of her darling's head,
And clasps a shade of that transplanted blossom,
By angels coveted.

Heaven opens awful on the Christian's vision,
He fears, and sees, with half-suspended breath,
The white-robed Elders, and the palms Elysian,
And Jesus conquering Death!

The maiden mourning for her shipwrecked lover,
While on the pictured pasTher fancy dwells,
Beholds once more his image bend above her,
And hears her marriage bells!

Yea, with whatever of desire or passion
The pilgrim walks this mystic land, he sees
His thoughts take shape, and counterfeit the fashion
Of strict realities.

But on the left there lies a valley lonely,
Wherein is naught of quiet or delight;
Haunted by Shapes that love the darkness only,
And terrify the night.

There screams the horned owl from caves abysmal,
The vampyre broods, and night-winds moan alway:
And the blank moon makes desolation dismal
With her distracted ray.

Beware, beware! for hideous and gigantic
Are they who there in dreadful ambush lie;
A goblin crew! most merciless and frantic,
Whose names are Incubi .

They seize the vagrant in these paths of error,
Bind him, and sit like lead upon his breast,
And grin and glower on his speechless terror
And motionless unrest.

In breathless swoons he sinks, and dizzy trances,
Or hears his death announced from room to room,
While ever in his dim brain grows and dances
Some visionary doom.

Fear shrieks within him, but his tongue refuses
Translation of the thunder-thoughts that roll
To silent lips: his limbs forget their uses,
And hope forsakes his soul.

Here also bide those baneful Sprites that sprinkle
Malarious dews on night-belated men,
And Imps malign whose phosphor-lanterns twinkle
O'er many a fatal fen.

Ah, venture not upon those regions chasmal!
Those haunts of horror — that unholy ground!
I doubt if sights so ghastly and phantasmal
May otherwhere be found.

Such is the Kingdom, over whose existence
The brooding shades of mortal doubt are cast;
Such is the Realm that, dim with night and distance,
Lies unexplored and vast.

Wherefore I come among you, friends and strangers,
Adventureful, fatigued and travel-worn;
Returning, by a route beset with dangers,
Unto the coasts of morn;

Whereon I find the magic spell is broken,
And skilful fiction all the record seems;
And Memory holds the solitary token
Of the dim L AND OF D REAMS .