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The unpurged images of day recedes; |
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The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; |
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Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song |
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After great cathedral gong; |
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A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains |
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All that man is, |
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All mere complexities, |
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The fury and the mire of human veins. |
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Before me floats an image, man or shade, |
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Shade more than man, more image than a shade; |
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For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth |
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May unwind the winding path; |
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A mouth that has no moisture and no breath |
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Breathless mouths may summon; |
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I hail the superhuman; |
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I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. |
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Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, |
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More miracle than bird or handiwork, |
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Planted on the star-lit golden bough, |
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Can like the cocks of Hades crow, |
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Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud |
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In glory of changeless metal |
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Common bird or petal |
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And all complexities of mire or blood. |
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At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit |
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Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, |
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Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, |
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Where blood-begotten spirits come |
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And all complexities of fury leave, |
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Dying into a dance, |
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An agony of trance, |
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An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. |
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Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, |
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Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, |
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The golden smithies of the Emperor! |
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Marbles of the dancing floor |
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Break bitter furies of complexity, |
|
Those images that yet |
|
Fresh images beget, |
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That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. |
