The hosts of the glittering fay return.
Their sunken palaces in lakes of dream
rise, amaze, and perish.

What of avowals then, fealties of ruin?
The splendid Emperor of Jerusalem dreams
of the Emperor of Jerusalem in his splendor.
The poets at their board
subvert the empire with their sorrow.
Powerless and melancholy, the young men smile
evasively and stroll
along the shores of the slumbering lake. We hear
the diapasons of a drownd magnificence.

Then, then the agony came.
“there is something else,” I said.
I had not known
I had so deep a sorrowing.

The knights are luminous with the dreamer’s splendor.
I serve the unease of an early promise.
I remember now the sea was calm,
the wind had fallen into a still of potency.

The sails hung slack, and the Sun in His heavens
was the Lion of our sorrow. I drank
the draft from a secret thirst.

The people of the goddess Danu* smile
evasively and work their spell.

The poets are foolish in their wise.
They stroll like gallants in the park of days,
attended by their shadows that are hounds
of a disturbing wonder.

O but these gallants seem so calm,
they fall into a still of potency,
listless, uneasy rememberers.

The palaces of the fay appear.
We seem to hear the battle cry, or love cry,
or death cry,       the last haloo
of some deserted lover’s horn.      lost
upon a field we had forgotten,        amaze
and perish.

*In Irish mythology, Danu is a hypothetical mother goddess of the
Tuatha Dé Danann (Old Irish: "The peoples of the goddess Danu").