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| THIS was the mightiest house that God e’er made, | |
| This roofless mansion of the incorruptible. | |
| These joists and bastions once bore walls as fair | |
| As Solomon’s palace of white ivory. | |
| Here majesty and love and beauty dwelt, | 5 |
| Shakespeare’s wit from these lorn walls looked down. | |
| Sadness like the autumn made it bare, | |
| Passion like a tempest shook its base, | |
| And joy filled all its halls with ecstasy. | |
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| This was the home wherein all dreams of earth | 10 |
| And air and ocean, all supreme delights, | |
| Made mirth and madness: wisdom pored alone; | |
| And power dominion held: and splendid hope: | |
| And fancy like the delicate sunrise woke | |
| To burgeoning thought and form and melody. | 15 |
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| Beneath its dome the agony of the Jew, | |
| The pride of Caesar or the hate of Cain, | |
| The thought of Plato or the heart of Burns, | |
| Once dwelt in some dim form of being’s light. | |
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| Within these walls of wondrous structure, dread, | 20 |
| A magic lute of elfin melody | |
| Made music immortal, such as never came | |
| From out those ancient halls of Orphean song. | |
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| Love dreamed of it, and like a joy it rose. | |
| Power shaped its firm foundations like the base | 25 |
| Of mountain majesty: and o’er its towers | |
| Truth from fair windows made his light look down. | |
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| But came a weird and evil demon host, | |
| Besieged its walls, destroyed its marvellous front; | |
| Shattered its casements, dismantled all its dream, | 30 |
| And hurled it down from out its sunward height; | |
| And now it lies bereft of all its joy | |
| And pride and power and godlike majesty; | |
| The sport of elements and hideous mimes, | |
| That blench its corridors, desecrate its rooms, | 35 |
| Where once dwelt love and beauty, joy and hope, | |
| Now tenantless: save for the incurious wind, | |
| And ghostlike rains that beat its bastions bare, | |
| And evil things that creep its chambers through. | |
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| But whither thence is fled that tenant rare, | 40 |
| That weird indweller of this wasted house? | |
| Back from the petalled bloom withdraws the dew, | |
| The melody from the shell, the day from heaven, | |
| To build afar earth’s resurrection morn. | |
| And so, Love trusts, in some diviner air | 45 |
| The lord of this lorn mansion dwells in light | |
| Of vaster beauty, vaster scope and dream; | |
| Where weariness and gladness satiate not, | |
| Where power and splendid being know no ruin, | |
| And evil greeds and envyings work no wrong. | 50 |
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