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THE HASHISH-EATER
THE HASHISH-EATER;
or, THE APOCALYPSE OF EVIL
Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;I crown me with the million-coloured sunOf secret worlds incredible, and takeTheir trailing skies for vestment, when I soar,Throned on the mounting zenith, and illumeThe spaceward-flown horizons infinite.Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,By jealous moons maleficently urgedTo follow me forever; mountains hornedWith peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawedWith sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;And continents of serpent-shapen trees,With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fireBy that supreme ascendance. Sorcerers,And evil kings predominantly armedWith scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin, whereonAre worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,With foam-light songs from silver fragrance wrought,Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moonsWhere viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,With antic gnomes abominably wise,Heave up their icy horns across my way:But naught deters me from the goal ordainedBy suns, and aeons, and immortal wars,And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose nameIs all the secret of forgotten glyphs,By sinful gods in torrid rubies writFor ending of a brazen book; the goalWhereat my soaring ecstacy may stand,
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