Opium

By Madison Julius Cawein

On reading De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater.

I seemed to stand before a temple walled
From shadows and night's unrealities;
Filled with dark music of dead memories,
And voices, lost in darkness, aye that called.
I entered. And, beneath the dome's high-halled
Immensity, one forced me to my knees
Before a blackness -- throned 'mid semblances
And spectres -- crowned with flames of emerald.
Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears
The names of Horror and Oblivion,
Priests of this god, -- and bade me die and dream.
Then, in the heart of hell, a thousand years
Meseemed I lay -- dead; while the iron stream
Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one.