Chimaera writhes beside the tragic flame

of the old hearth: her starting jaws proclaim,

a silent cry, the craven world’s attaint.

Her vans that beat against a hard constraint

leaps, as the coals jet in a moment-spasm:

yet their taut ribs hurt not the serpent chasm

of shade, that slips swift to its absent den,

to settle, grimlier, at her throat again.

And, starward were their prison-roof increas’d,

no sun that bathes him for a dewy east

would light her mail, above the tainted air

a meteor-dazzling gem, but the red flare

kindle disastrous on our burning eyes

from where the sullen embers agonize,

once the heart’s rose-flusht dream of living gold.

Therefore her croup, thro’ many a lapsing fold,

is bound into the iron’s night, to check

the frenzy that contorts her charging neck:

her life is flitting with the fitful red

splashing her flank as ‘twere her courage bled

to curdle with the void, whose metal-cold

shall seal her gone, a block no art shall mould.

And now the shining tongues that sprang to lick

the obscene blackness in are tarnisht thick:

insidiously thro’ each blank pane the dark

invades from space, vast cemetery: one spark

flies up, the lessen’d ghost of flame: her flight

stiffens, and is a settled piece of night.