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THE HASHISH-EATER
Bulks of enormous crimson, kraken-limbedAnd kraken-headed, lifting up as crownsThe octiremes of perished emperors,And galleys fraught with royal gems, that sailedFrom a sea-deserted haven.Swifter growThe visions: Now a mighty city looms,Hewn from a hill of purest cinnabar,To domes and turrets like a sunrise throngedWith tier on tier of captive moons, half-drownedIn shifting erubescence. But whose handsWere sculptors of its doors, and columns wroughtTo semblance of prodigious blooms of old,No eremite hath lingered there to say,And no man comes to learn: For long agoA prophet came, warning its timid kingAgainst the plague of lichens that had creptAcross subverted empires, and the sandOf wastes that Cyclopean mountains ward;Which, slow and ineluctable, would come,To take his fiery bastions and his fanes,And quench his domes with greenish tetter. NowI see a host of naked giants, armedWith horns of behemoth and unicorn,Who wander, blinded by the clinging spellsOf hostile wizardry, and stagger onTo forests where the very leaves have eyes,And ebonies like wrathful dragons roarTo teaks a-chuckle in the loathly gloom;Where coiled lianas lean, with serried fangs,From writhing palms with swollen boles that moan;Where leeches of a scarlet moss have suckedThe eyes of some dead monster, and have crawledTo bask upon his azure-spotted spine;Where hydra-throated blossoms hiss and sing,Or yawn with mouths that drip a sluggish dew,Whose touch is death and slow corrosion. Then,I watch a war of pigmies, met by night,With pitter of their drums of parrot's hide,
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