In the midnight heavens burning

      Thro’ the ethereal deeps afar,

Once I watch’d with restless yearning

      An alluring, aureate star;

Ev’ry eve aloft returning,

      Gleaming nigh the Arctic car.

Mystic waves of beauty blended

      With the gorgeous golden rays;

Phantasies of bliss descended

      In a myrrh’d Elysian haze;

In the lyre-born chords extended

      Harmonies of Lydian lays.

There (thought I) lie scenes of pleasure,

      Where the free and blessed dwell,

And each moment bears a treasure

      Freighted with the lotus-spell,

And there floats a liquid measure

      From the lute of Israfel.

And (I told myself) were shining

      Worlds of happiness unknown,

Peace and Innocence entwining

      By the Crowned Virtue’s throne;

Men of light, their thoughts refining

      Purer, fairer, than my own.

Thus I mus’d when o’er the vision

      Crept a red delirious change;

Hope dissolving to derision,

      Beauty to distortion strange;

Hymnic chords in weird collision,

      Spectral sights in endless range.

Crimson burn’d the star of madness

      As behind the beams I peer’d;

All was woe that seem’d but gladness

      Ere my gaze with truth was sear’d;

Cacodaemons, mir’d with madness,

      Thro’ the fever’d flick’ring leer’d.

Now I know the fiendish fable

      That the golden glitter bore;

Now I shun the spangled sable

      That I watch’d and lov’d before;

But the horror, set and stable,

      Haunts my soul forevermore.