The Star-Treader and Other Poems

This Rome, that was the toil of many men,

The consummation of laborious years—

Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,

And image of the wide desire of kings—

Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,

Fuel of vision, brief embodiment

Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong

Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour,

When ages piled on ages were a flame

To all the years behind, and years to be.

Yet any sunset were as much as this,

Save for the music forced by hands of fire

From out the hard strait silences which bind

Dull Matter's tongueless mouth—a music pierced

With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry

Its agony—and save that I believed

The radiance redder for the blood of men.

Destruction hastens and intensifies

The process that is Beauty, manifests

Ranges of form unknown before, and gives

Motion and voice and hue where otherwise

Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.