Opium

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_On reading De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater."_


  I seemed to stand before a temple walled
  From shadows and night's unrealities;
  Filled with dark music of dead memories,
  And voices, lost in darkness, aye that called.
  I entered. And, beneath the dome's high-halled
  Immensity, one forced me to my knees
  Before a blackness--throned 'mid semblances
  And spectres--crowned with flames of emerald.
  Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears
  The names of Horror and Oblivion,
  Priests of this god,--and bade me die and dream.
  Then, in the heart of hell, a thousand years
  Meseemed I lay--dead; while the iron stream
  Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one.

© Madison Julius Cawein