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THE HASHISH-EATER
Are writ in little sapphires; and I roamFor centuries, and hear the brazen clocksInnumerably clang with such a soundAs brazen hammers make, by devils dinnedOn tombs of all the dead; and nevermoreI find the gorget, but at length I findA sealèd room whose nameless prisonerMoans with a nameless torture, and would turnTo hell's red rack as to a lilied couchFrom that whereon they stretched him; and I find,Prostrate upon a lotus-painted floor,The loveliest of all beloved slavesMy emperor hath, and from her pulseless sideA serpent rises, whiter than the rootOf some venefic bloom in darkness grown,And gazes up with green-lit eyes that seemLike drops of cold, congealing poison.***
Hark!What word was whispered in a tongue unknown,In crypts of some impenetrable world?Whose is the dark, dethroning secrecyI cannot share, though I am king of sunsAnd king therewith of strong eternity,Whose gnomons with their swords of shadow guardMy gates, and slay the intruder? Silence loadsThe wind of ether, and the worlds are stillTo hear the word that flees me. All my dreamsFall like a rack of fuming vapours raisedTo semblance by a necromant, and leaveSpirit and sense unthinkably alone,Above a universe of shrouded stars,And suns that wander, cowled with sullen gloom,Like witches to a Sabbath.***Fear is bornIn crypts below the nadir, and hath crawledReaching the floor of space and waits for wingsTo lift it upward, like a hellish wormFain for the flesh of seraphs. Eyes that gleam,But are not eyes of suns or galaxies,
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