The Three Witches

All the moon-shed nights are over, And the days of gray and dun; There is neither may nor clover, And the day and night are one. Not an hamlet, not a city Meets our strained and tearless eyes; In the plain without a pity, Where the wan grass droops and dies. We shall wander through the meaning Of a day and see no light, For our lichened arms are leaning On the ends of endless night. We, the children of Astarte, Dear abortions of the moon, In a gay and silent party, We are riding to you soon. Burning ramparts, ever burning! To the flame which never dies We are yearning, yearning, yearning, With our gay and tearless eyes. In the plain without a pity, (Not an hamlet, not a city) Where the wan grass droops and dies.  Johann Henry Fuseli - Three Witches

Spleen

(For Arthur Symons) 

I was not sorrowful, I could not weep, 
And all my memories were put to sleep. 

I watched the river grow more white and strange, 
All day till evening I watched it change. 

All day till evening I watched the rain 
Beat wearily upon the window pane 

I was not sorrowful, but only tired 
Of everything that ever I desired. 

Her lips, her eyes, all day became to me 
The shadow of a shadow utterly. 

All day mine hunger for her heart became 
Oblivion, until the evening came, 

And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep, 
With all my memories that could not sleep.

To One in Bedlam

With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,
Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine;
Those scentless wisps of straw, that miserably line
His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares,

Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars
With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchanted wine,
And make his melancholy germane to the stars'?

O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,
Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me;
Half a fool's kingdom, far from men who sow and reap,
All their days, vanity? Better than mortal flowers,
Thy moon-kissed roses seem: better than love or sleep,
The star-crowned solitude of thine oblivious hours!

Absinthia Taetra

Green changed to white, emerald to an opal: nothing was changed

The man let the water trickle gently into his glass, and as the green clouded, a mist fell from his mind.

Then he drank opaline.

Memories and terrors beset him. The past tore after him like a panther and through the blackness of the present he saw the luminous tiger eyes of the things to be

But he drank opaline.

And that obscure night of the soul, and the valley of humiliation, through which he stumbled were forgotten. He saw blue vistas of undiscovered countries, high prospects and a quiet, caressing sea. The past shed its perfume over him, to-day held his hand as it were a little child, and to-morrow shone like a white star: nothing was changed.

He drank opaline.

The man had known the obscure night of the soul, and lay even now in the valley of humiliation; and the tiger menace of things to be was red in the skies. But for a little while he had forgotten.

Green changed to white, emerald to an opal: nothing was changed.