XNOUBIS - a poem

 Aye — in the hush where the lamp-fumes curled,
And the air grew thick with the weight of sleep,
There rose from the dusk of the under-world
A tread too heavy, a breath too deep.

Through curtains of smoke and silken gloom,
It came like thunder wrapped in bloom:
A lion vast with a golden glare,
And serpents tangled in its hair.

Each serpent hissed with a silver tongue,
Each eye was a sun that had died too young,
Yet burned in death with a fiercer flame,
And whispered aloud an unspeakable name.

The walls grew wide, and the chamber spun,
As stars unhooked from the vault of night;
And I, undone by what had begun,
Stood naked before that dreadful light.

Its mane it shook—and time fell dead;
The ground was a sea, and the sky turned red;
And all that I was, and all I knew,
Melted like wax in that serpent-dew.

No voice I had, nor breath, nor bone,
Only a shadow that knelt alone—
While the lion, crowned with writhing dread,
Passed through my soul and onward fled.