I am the specter who returns

Unto some desolate world in ruin borne afar

On the black flowing of Lethean skies:

Ever I search, in cryptic galleries,

The void sarcophagi, the broken urns

Of many a vanished avatar:

Or haunt the gloom of grumbling pylons vast

In temples that enshrine the shadowy past.

Viewless, impalpable and fleet,

I roam stupendous avenues, and greet

Familiar sphinxes carved from everlasting stone,

Or the fair, brittle gods of long ago,

Decayed and fallen low.

And there I mark the tall clepsammiae

That time has overthrown,

And empty clepsydrae,

And dials drowned in umbrage never-lifting;

And there, on rusty parapegms,

I read the ephemerides

Of antique stars and elder planets drifting

Oblivionward in night.

And there, with purples of the tomb bedight,

And crowned with funeral gems,

I hold awhile the throne

Whereon mine immemorial selves have sate,

Canopied by the triple-tinted glory

Of the three suns forever paled and flown.

I am the specter who returns

And dwells content with his forlorn estate

In mansions lost and hoary

Where no lamp burns;

Who feasts within the sepulcher,

And finds the ancient shadows lovelier

Than gardens all emblazed with sevenfold noon,

Or topaz-builded towers

That throng below some iris-pouring moon.

Exiled and homeless in the younger stars,

Henceforth I shall inhabit that grey clime

Whose days belong to primal calendars;

Nor would I come again

Back to the garish terrene hours;

For I am free of vaults unfathomable

And treasures lost from time:

With bat and vampire there

I flit through somber skies immeasurable

Or fly adown the unending subterranes;

Mummied and ceremented,

I sit in councils of the kingly dead;

And oftentimes for vestiture I wear

The granite of great idols looming darkly

In atlantean fanes;

Or closely now and starkly

I cling as clings the attenuating air

About the ruins bare.