How coming to the Feast unbid,
he found the gorgeous table spread
With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit,
with stones that bear the shape of bread:

How Life was nought but ray of sun
that clove the darkness thick and blind,
The ravings of the reckless storm,
the shrieking of the rav'ening wind;

How lovely visions 'guiled his sleep,
aye fading with the break of morn,
Till every sweet became a sour,
till every rose became a thorn;

Till dust and ashes met his eyes
wherever turned their saddened gaze;
The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves,
the rubbish of his wasted days;

How every high heroic Thought
that longed to breathe empyrean air,
Failed of its feathers, fell to earth,
and perisht of a sheer despair;

How, dower'd with heritage of brain,
whose might has split the solar ray,
His rest is grossest coarsest earth,
a crown of gold on brow of clay;