1. THE STRANGE SHRINE.
Amid the pangs of toil, the throes of tensest might,
Racked by a savage fire, with brow distraught, I fain
Had welded in one mass, with more than mortal strain,
The shapes, hues, rhythme of my every sleepless night.
A church I built aloft, whose like none ever viewed,
Mastering direst force of mightiness! I raised
Therein a cyclop-statue, that my chisel's crazed
Zeal out of breakage left from giant clods had hewed.
Upon the walls I wrote the annals of my dreams. .
In strangest colour-orgies there my torment gleams,
And all my dark-voiced anthems from the organ flow.
Who enters there, these secret wonders shall not know,—
And I, what they betoken, unto none can teach,
For I, who wrought, can fathom not my own soul's speech.
