The Wine of Song

WITHIN Fancy's halls I sit and quaff
Rich draughts of the wine of Song,
And I drink and drink
To the very brink
Of delirium wild and strong,
Till I lose all sense of the outer world
And see not the human throng.

The lyral chords of each rising thought
Are swept by a hand unseen,
And I glide and glide
With my music bride,
Where few spiritless souls have been;
And I soar afar on wings of sound
With my fair Æolian queen.

Deep, deeper still, from the springs of Thought
I quaff till the fount is dry,
And I climb and climb
To a height sublime
Up the stars of some lyric sky,
Where I seem to rise upon airs that melt
Into song as they pass by.

Millennial rounds of bliss I live,
Withdrawn from my cumbrous clay,
As I sweep and sweep
Through infinite deep
On deep of that starry spray;
Myself a sound on its world-wide round,
A tone on its spheral way.

And wheresoe'er through the wondrous space
My soul wings its noiseless flight,

On their astral rounds
Float divinest sounds,
Unseen, save by spirit-sight,
Obeying some wise, eternal law,
As fixed as the law of light.

But, oh, when my cup of dainty bliss
Is drained of the wine of Song,
How I fall and fall
At the sober call
Of the body that waiteth long
To hurry me back to its cares terrene,
And earth's spiritless human throng!