Seeker

In valleys where the lotos falls And rots by lily-stifled streams, A sleeper, dreaming of the sea, Shall rise, and leave the halcyon lawns, And follow fainting trails alone Into the waste that has no well, Of fare on some fantasmal quest To climes beyond the boreal snow. For, sated with the lotos-fruit, He craves again the vanishing brine, The sunken ships, the siren isles, The maelstroms haunted by the mew. Amid chimera and mirage He plucks the acrid outland pome And mordent herbs that make him whole, And trails the meteor and the star To leave this vulture-burnished bones In lands of knightlier sleep than they Shall haply share whose bones are laid Where now the lotos-blossoms blow.