by

Thomas Boyd

	Where is thy lovely perilous abode?
	  In what strange phantom-land
	Glimmer the fairy turrets whereto rode
	  The ill-starred poet band?
	
	Say, in the Isle of Youth hast though thy home,
	  The sweetest singer there,
	Stealing on winged steed across the foam
	  Through the moonlit air?
	
	And by the gloomy peaks of Erigal,
	  Haunted by storm and cloud,
	Wing past, and to thy lover there let fall
	  His singing robe and shroud?
	
	Or, where the mists of bluebell float beneath
	  The red stems of the pine,
	And sunbeams strike thro' shadow, dost thou breathe
	  The word that makes him thine?
	
	Or, is thy palace entered thro' some cliff
	  When radiant tides are full,
	And round thy lover's wandering starlit skiff
	  Coil in luxurious lull?
	
	And would he, entereing on the brimming flood,
	  See caverns vast in height,
	And daimond columns, crowned with leaf and bud,
	  Glow in long lanes of light.
	
	And there the pearl of that great glittering shell
	  Trembling, behold thee lone,
	Now weaving in slow dance an awful spell,
	  Now still upon thy throne?
	
	Thy beauty! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro'
	  Then melt as in a dream;
	The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue
	  And all that Be and Seem!
	
	Thy lovely motions answering to the rhyme
	  That anceint Nature sings,
	That keeps the stars in cadence for all time,
	  And echoes thro' all things!
	
	Whether he sees thee thus, or in his dreams,
	  Thy light makes all lights dim;
	An aching solitude from henceforth seems
	  The world of men to him.
	
	Thy luring song, above the sensuous roar,
	  He follows with delight,
	Shutting behind him Life's last gloomy door,
	  And fares into the Night.

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