The life that drinks of agéd spirits not:
It is a being I, for as long as
My essence spills its art to terrene ground
Shall never palate; from my cellar do
Unlock themselves the bygone spectres of
Those times of since joviality. And
I sup of them; intoxication sweet
Doth lift me from my earthy perch, alas
But only for a fleeting moment’s time;
Yea callous floor awaits the coming fall.
How is it that these grim apparitions
Do find me, after this imprisonment
Of markéd length? O will no lock nor key
Nor settled silt and sand condemn these ghosts
Away in the musty depths for all time?
My sweet, my fair, your time in there has made
You but the more sublime. In the darkness
Behind my eyelids do you dance with grace
As yet unrivalled in the light, with skirts
Atwirl and flowing. Heed thee not, I say,
That thus illuminated, formalwear
To you is as a hide to halibut.
Forsooth the bleached-white landscape doth perturb
Mine eyes as wretched sun doth steal its shade!
My bliss, ethereal, it dares disturb
As fortune lost becomes another’s made.
Here as I toil, first dust doth recover
Your silken brow, and so subsides my weep,
But never gone, there shall come another,
Alas! your perfect haunt is mine to keep.
