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In the midnight heavens burning

through ethereal deeps afar,

once I watched with restless yearning

an alluring, aureate star

Every eye aloft returning, gleaming nigh the arctic car

Mystic waves of beauty blended with the gorgeous golden rays

Phantasies of bliss descended in a myrrhed elysian haze

and in lyre-born chords extended

There (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,

where the free and blessed dwell,

and each moment bears a treasure

freighted with a lotus-spell,

and there floats a liquid measure

from the lute of Israfel

There 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 our own

Thus I mused, when o’er the vision

crept a red delirious change

hope dissolving to derision,

beauty to distortion strange

hymnic chords in weird collision

Crimson burned the star of sadness

as behind the beams I peered

all was woe that seemed but gladness

here my gaze with truth was seared

Cacodaemons, mired with madness, through the fevered flickering leered

Now I know the fiendish fable that the golden glitter bore

Now I shun the spangled sable that I watched and loved before

But the horror, set and stable, haunts my soul for evermore

Astrophobos