XIII
And league on league the eminence of blooms,
That flashed and billowed like a summer sea,
Rolled out a waste of thorns and tombs; where bee
And butterfly and bird hung dead in looms
XIV
Of worm and spider. And through tomb and brier,
A thin wind, parched with thirsty dust and sand,
Went wailing as if mourning some lost land
Of perished empire, Babylon or Tyre.
XV
Long, long with blistered feet we wandered in
That land of ruins, through whose sky of brass
Hate's Harpy shrieked; and in whose iron grass
The Hydra hissed of undestroyable Sin.
XVI
And there at last, behold, the House of Doom,--
Red, as if Hell had glared it into life,
Blood-red, and howling with incessant strife,--
With burning battlements, towered in the gloom.
XVII
And throned within sat Darkness.--Who might gaze
Upon that form, that threatening presence there,
Crowned with the flickering corpse-lights of Despair,
And yet escape sans madness and amaze?
XVIII
And we had hoped to find among these hills
The House of Beauty!--Curst, yea, thrice accurst,
The hope that lures one on from last to first
With vain illusions that no time fulfills!
XIX
Why will we struggle to attain, and strive,
When all we gain is but an empty dream?--
Better, unto my thinking, doth it seem
To end it all and let who will survive;
XX
To find at last all beauty is but dust;
That love and sorrow are the very same;
That joy is only suffering's sweeter name;
And sense is but the synonym of lust.
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