The Wine Of Song.

Within Fancy's Halls I sit, and quaff     Rich draughts of the Wine of Song,         And I drink, and drink,         To the very brink     Of delirium wild and strong,     Till I lose all sense of the outer world,     And see not the human throng.     The lyral chords of each rising thought     Are swept by a hand unseen;         And I glide, and glide,         With my music bride,     Where few spiritless souls have been;     And I soar afar on wings of sound,     With my fair AEolian Queen.     Deep, deeper still, from the springs of Thought     I quaff, till the fount is dry;         And I climb, and climb,         To a height sublime,     Up the stars of some lyric sky,     Where I seem to rise upon airs that melt     Into song as they pass by.     Millennial rounds of bliss I live,     Withdrawn from my cumbrous clay,         As I sweep, and sweep,         Through infinite deep     On deep of that starry spray;     Myself a sound on its world-wide round,     A tone on its spheral way.     And wheresoe'er through the wondrous space     My soul wings its noiseless flight,         On their astral rounds         Float divinest sounds,     Unseen, save by spirit-sight,     Obeying some wise, eternal law,     As fixed as the law of light.     But, oh, when my cup of dainty bliss     Is drained of the Wine of Song,         How I fall, and fall,         At the sober call     Of the body, that waiteth long     To hurry me back to its cares terrene,     And earth's spiritless human throng.