The plumes of night, unfurl’d

and eyed with fire, are whirl’d

slowly above this watch, funereal:

the vast is wide, and yet

no way lies open; set

no bar, but the flat deep rises, a placid wall.

Some throne thou think’st to win

or pride of thy far kin;

this incomplete and dusty hour to achieve:

know that the hour is one,

eternally begun,

eternally deferr’d, thy grasp a Danaid sieve.

O weary realm, O height

the which exhausted flight

familiar finds, home of its prompting ill!

here, there, or there, or there,

even the same despair;

rest in thy place, O fool, the heart eludes thee still.

Rest — and a new abyss

suddenly yawns, of this

the moment sole, and yet the counterpart:

and thou must house it, thou,

within thy fleshy Now,

thyself the abyss that shrinks, the unbounded hermit-heart:

the mightier heart untold

whose paining depths enfold

all loneliness, all height, all vision’d shores;

and the abyss uncrown’d,

blank failure thro’ each bound

from the consummate point thy broken hope implores.