It was golden and splendid,

   That City of light;

A vision suspended

   In deeps of the night;

A region of wonder and glory,

      whose temples were marble and white.

I remember the season

   It dawn’d on my gaze;

The mad time of unreason,

   The brain-numbing days

When Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly

      stalks onward to torture and craze.

More lovely than Zion

   It shone in the sky,

When the beams of Orion

   Beclouded my eye,

Bringing sleep that was fill’d with dim mem’ries

      of moments obscure and gone by.

Its mansions were stately

   With carvings made fair,

Each rising sedately

   On terraces rare,

And the gardens were fragrant and bright

      with strange miracles blossoming there.

The avenues lur’d me

   With vistas sublime;

Tall arches assur’d me

   That once on a time

I had wander’d in rapture beneath them,

      and bask’d in the Halcyon clime.

On the plazas were standing

   A sculptur’d array;

Long-bearded, commanding,

    rave men in their day —

But one stood dismantled and broken,

      its bearded face batter’d away.

In that city effulgent

   No mortal I saw;

But my fancy, indulgent

   To memory’s law,

Linger’d long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed

      their stone features with awe.

I fann’d the faint ember

   That glow’d in my mind,

And strove to remember

   The aeons behind;

To rove thro’ infinity freely,

      and visit the past unconfin’d.

Then the horrible warning

   Upon my soul sped

Like the ominous morning

   That rises in red,

And in panic I flew from the knowledge

      of terrors forgotten and dead.