Classic Poem

1

I WOKE to find me lying in
 A lonely desert place,
Wreathing, silent, silver sands
 Caress'd my hands and face;
Of hill or tree or human thing
 I saw nor sign nor trace.

2

But the glad dreams that children dream
 Come not more fine or fair:
Unto that lone awakening
 I can no thing compare:
I laugh'd for mere delight to breathe
 The bloomy golden air.

3

Loosely I was clad in white,
 With a girdle at my waist;
And from my soul seem'd every stain
 Of care and pain effaced:
A nodding wreath of poppy flowers
 Upon my brow was placed.

4

I kiss'd my naked arms, my heart
 With even rapture beat
When curious hands, blue-vein'd and wan,
 I laid upon my feet:
The trickling sands about them seem'd
 Like waters cool and sweet.

5

And long I look'd in silence o'er
 The silvery expanse:
Anon with music's daft employ
 I did my joy enhance:
No siren e'er had flutier voice
 To give it utterance.

6

Alas, but this did not suffice—
 The more I sang, the more
Methought the sands alluringly
 Did beckon me explore
What splendid city lay beyond—
 What foam-besprent seashore!

7

Then up I rose and sought the West,
 Wherein the Sun declin'd:
And light and gaily on I flew,
 While ever blew behind,
Outspreading wide my yellow hair,
 A wonder breathing wind.

8

On and on and ever on,
 With white, untiring feet;
And over sands interm'nable
 Ne'er fled gazelle so fleet
To find what faery thing might be
 Where sky and desert meet.

9

How many a sore and stricken heart
 Might then have envied me
That silent, soothing, desert land!—
 So vacant and so free!
That shelter in the far away
 Of sunlit liberty.

10

And soon with scarce a motion of
 My own I smiled to find
How all unstriving I did fly:—
 Then reckless I resign'd
My body as a burden blithe
 Unto the eager wind.

11

And on and on and ever on
 I held my steady way;
And felt the passion of that flight
 No distance might allay;
Not e'en the stars' cool benison
 At ending of the day.

12

But with amaze I saw at last
 How huge the sun did shine:
And this also I marvell'd o'er—
 It did no more decline,
But red and eerie linger'd on
 The far horizon line.

13

Yet on and on and ever on
 The silver sands I spurn'd,
Till in the nearing western sky
 My ghastly eye discern'd
What awful flames were writhing where
 The seeming sun had burn'd.

14

And from those flames there rear'd aloft
 Revolting smoke and fume:
Riven by many a fiery streak
 The pitchy reek did loom
Prodigious thro' the night that lour'd
 Above that Pit of Doom.

15

Then went the sands to ashes grey
 That smoulder'd 'neath my feet:
The wind, a tempest horrible,
 Now baffled all retreat;
And soon upon my twitching face
 I felt the searing heat.

16

The wreath of scarlet poppy flowers
 Fell withering and dead:
The scars upon my burning brow
 Were scarlet now instead;
My girdle to a serpent turn'd,
 Biting, and bloody red.

17

My hair, all in a moment grey,
 And monstrous overgrown,
That rigid in the reeking night
 With drear affright had flown,
Around me in outrageous worms
 Of horror now was blown.

18

Till came the end where seems no end—
 My body sway'd and whirl'd
Frantic on the lurid edge
 Where Hell doth hedge the World:
Then down the flaming Pit of Doom,
 Shrieking to God, 'twas hurl'd!