Classic Poem

Let me forget these sordid histories,
These callous records of obscene disease,
This world of scabies and of syphilis
Wherein I drudge until my whole world is
Besotted by the sodden atmosphere. . . .

Let me remember Venus dawning clear
Through beryl seas of air, a crystal flame —
Glistening as from the cold salt wave she came,
Over the far and ghostly hills of Wales,
Dwindling in darkness as the twilight fails. . . .

Let me recall the singing and the shine
Of the clear amber waters of the Tyne,
Pouring from peaty uplands of black moss
Over grey boulders where the salmon toss
Wet curving silver bodies in the air,
Scrambling in shoals to climb the salmon-stair
Over the roaring weir. . . .
Let me again
In that huge, clanking, and eternal train
Over the prairies of Dakota go —
League after league of level stainless snow
Stretching unbroken under the low sky,
World without end to all eternity,
Until desire and dream and all delight
Drowse to oblivion in a timeless white
Unundulating wilderness. . . .
Or let me sail
Again up the blue Bosporus within hail
Of many-fountained gardens of the rose,
Where bloom on bloom the summer burns and glows,
By minarets that soar like lily-blooms
About the shimmering white mushroom domes
Of marble mosques in groves of cypresses. . . .

Till I remember no more histories
Of horror, or in drudgery and fret
Of endless days no longer quite forget
The stars and singing waters and the snow,
And how the roses of Arabia blow.