O Golden-Tongued Romance

We found, we knew it dimly Within a dead life grimly By guarding time inurned— A glamour far and olden, A fulgor night-enfolden, A flame that in long-darkling Eden burned. Though hardly then we claimed it, We yet adored and named it With a name forgotten now— A faery word and dawn-like, A word of gramarie, gone like An opal bird from off a purple bough. . . . Ah! vain the lamp reluming The unhaunted vault inhuming The cold Canopic jar, And vain the charm recovered From out the daemon-hovered, Worm-travelled page of pentacled grimoire. And yet the thing we yearned for, The thing that we returned for From tomb and catacomb, It may not wholly dwindle While moon or meteor kindle A phantom beacon on the ebon foam. Through ghoul-watched wood unthridden, By goblin mere and midden, No ivory horn will blow, No gold lamp lighten gloom-ward, But we will carry doom-ward The broken beauty caught from long ago: An echo half evading The ear, remotely fading From a far-vibrant lyre. A long-plucked flower blooming In the dry urn, a fuming Myrrh-fragrant ember in a darkened pyre.