Opium

David Park Barnitz

Naught is more sweet than gently to let dream
The pallid flower of life asleep alway ;
Where the dim censer sends up far from day
Unceasingly its still-ascending stream,

O where the air winds its myrrh-scented steam
About thy naked body's disarray,
Shall not today's gold to thy shut eyes seem
Born and forgot in the dead ages gray ?

Sunk from life's mournful loud processional,
For thee shall not with high uplifted urn
The Night pour out dreams that awake and say,

--We were, O pallid maiden vesperal,
Before the world ; we also in our turn
By the vain morning gold scatter'd away.

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