I woke in sunlight, young and warm,
And vowed to give my dream a form.
I clove the cliff, I raised the stone,
With Orphic music of mine own,
Till soon the inviolable thought
To portico and palm was wrought.—
A marble city of the free,
With gardens at the western sea!
I made a house with lighted crypts
For mysteries and manuscripts;
I carved a stair to galleries,
And gave all men the brazen keys;
I gave to Seer and Sayer halls
With ancient wisdom on the walls;
I stored a Doric vault with gold,
As measure just for bought and sold;
I filled for watch and ward a dome
With civic lore of Athens, Rome;
I struck the lyre with unbound hair;
I fostered rites of praise and prayer.
And East across her mountains brought
Devices of her sturdy thought,
From rattling loom a flag with stars,
From flaming forges scimitars;
And West from island shore to this
Sent quaint perfumes and artifice,
In bamboo dwellings multiplied
By white-robed Buddhists almond-eyed.

But ere the morning moon's eclipse
In seas, beyond the homing ships,
Earth smote my beauty, and my towers
In flame were withered with my flowers;
And o'er the dread reverberations
Red rose the silent sun of nations.
Then kings on far pavilioned slopes
In starlight asked new horoscopes;
Then sullen priests, with hand to eyes,
Muttered the Sibyl's old replies;
Then islands and dominions proud
In litanies of terror prayed;
And hid within the fiery cloud,
I only was the Unafraid.

Could earth be one with my desire?—
Earth, sprung from zones of solar fire!
She plants a vale with fern and tree,
And sinks it down the sunless sea;
She hangs the crags with vine and branch,
And shatters with the avalanche;
She wreathes her brow, she rends her breast,
She knows no worst, she seeks no best.
She claimed the form, but the design
Was, is, and is forever mine!

Behold in Java and Ceylon
The silent ages slumber on.
Their jungles, where the tiger crawls
By sultry moonlit waterfalls,
Hide ruined palaces and halls—
Huge cities, dim, grotesque, and damp,
Where ebon door and ivory lamp
Had mocked the lightning and the rain
Ere Tyrian trader coasted Spain.
They perished by their soma bowls;
They left no hieroglyphs or scrolls;
Their names are lost, and legends tell
The earthquake smote them and they fell.

But in my larger towers to be
The bells will shout with brazen lips
To cities over land and sea
A jubilant apocalypse!
And o'er my gates shall stand the line,
By my imperial decree:
“I am a Symbol and a Sign,
A Witness and a Prophecy.”