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THE HASHISH-EATER
With bubbling grails of sacrificial bloodThat hide a hueless poison. And I read,Upon the tongue of a forgotten sphinx,The annuling word a spiteful demon wroteWith gall of slain chimeras; and I knowWhat pentacles the lunar wizards use,That once allured the gulf-returning roc,With ten great wings of furlèd storm, to pauseMidmost an alabaster mount; and there,With boulder-weighted webs of dragons'-gut,Uplift by cranes a captive giant built,They wound the monstrous, moonquake-throbbing bird,And plucked, from off his sabre-taloned feet,Uranian sapphires fast in frozen blood,With amethysts from Mars. I lean to read,With slant-lipped mages, in an evil star,The monstrous archives of a war that ranThrough wasted aeons, and the prophecyOf wars renewed, that shall commemorateSome enmity of wivern-headed kings,Even to the brink of time. I know the bloomsOf bluish fungus, freaked with mercury,That bloat within the craters of the moon,And in one still, selenic hour have shrunkTo pools of slime and fetor; and I knowWhat clammy blossoms, blanched and cavern-grown,Are proffered in Uranus to their godsBy mole-eyed peoples; and the livid seedOf some black fruit a king in Saturn ate,Which, cast upon his tinkling palace-floor,Took root between the burnished flags, and nowHath mounted, and become a hellish tree,Whose lithe and hairy branches, lined with mouths,Net like a hundred ropes his lurching throne,And strain at starting pillars. I beholdThe slowly-thronging corals, that usurpSome harbour of a million-masted sea,And sun them on the league-long wharves of gold—
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