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(Extract)
BEYOND the clime of Tripoly, and beyond | |
| Bahr Abiad, where the lone peaks, unconform | |
| To other hills, and with rare foliage crowned, | |
| Hold converse with the moon, a city stands | |
| Which yet no mortal guest hath ever found. | 5 |
| Around it stretch away the level sands | |
| Into the silence: pausing in his course, | |
| The ostrich kens it from his subject lands. | |
| Here with faint longings and a subdued force | |
| Once more was sought the ideal aliment | 10 |
| Of man’s most subtle being, the prime source | |
| Of all his blessings: here might still be blent | |
| Whate’er of heavenly beauty in form or sound | |
| Illumes the poet’s heart with ravishment. | |
| Thou fairy city, which the desert mound | 15 |
| Encompasseth, thou alien from the mass | |
| Of human guilt, I would not wish thee found! | |
| Perchance thou art too pure, and dost surpass | |
| Too far amid the ideas ranged high | |
| In the Eternal Reason’s perfectness, | 20 |
| To our deject and most embaséd eye, | |
| To look unharmed on thy integrity, | |
| Symbol of love, and truth, and all that cannot die. | |
| Thy palaces and pleasure-domes to me | |
| Are matter of strange thought: for sure thou art | 25 |
| A splendor in the wild: and aye to thee | |
| Did visible guardians of the earth’s great heart | |
| Bring their choice tributes, culled from many a mine, | |
| Diamond, and jasper, porphyry, and the art | |
| Of figured chrysolite: nor silver shine | 30 |
| There wanted, nor the mightier power of gold: | |
| So wert thou reared of yore, city divine! | |
| And who are they of blisses manifold, | |
| That dwell within thee? Spirits of delight, | |
| It may be spirits whose pure thoughts enfold, | 35 |
| In eminence of being, all the light | |
| That interpenetrates this mighty all, | |
| And doth endure in its own beauty’s right. | |
| And oh, the vision were majestical | |
| To them, indeed, of column, and of spire, | 40 |
| And hanging garden, and hoar waterfall! | |
| For we, poor prisoners of this earthy mire, | |
| See little; they the essence and the law | |
| Robing each other in its peculiar tire. | |
| Yet moments have been, when in thought I saw | 45 |
| That city rise upon me from the void, | |
| Populous with men: and fantasy would draw | |
| Such portraiture of life, that I have joyed | |
| In over-measure to behold her work, | |
| Rich with the myriad charms, by evil unalloyed. | 50 |
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