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The Star-Treader and Other Poems
This Rome, that was the toil of many men,
The consummation of laborious years—
Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead,
And image of the wide desire of kings—
Is made my darkling dream's effulgency,
Fuel of vision, brief embodiment
Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong
Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour,
When ages piled on ages were a flame
To all the years behind, and years to be.
Yet any sunset were as much as this,
Save for the music forced by hands of fire
From out the hard strait silences which bind
Dull Matter's tongueless mouth—a music pierced
With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry
Its agony—and save that I believed
The radiance redder for the blood of men.
Destruction hastens and intensifies
The process that is Beauty, manifests
Ranges of form unknown before, and gives
Motion and voice and hue where otherwise
Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all.
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