Revenant

Born this day in 1893
I am the spectre who returnsUnto some desolate world in min borne afarOn the black flowing of Lethean skies:Ever I search, in cryptic galleries,The void sarcophagi, the broken urnsOf many a vanished avatar;Or haunt the gloom of crumbling pylons vastIn temples that enshrine the shadowy past.Viewless, impalpable, and fleet,I roam stupendous avenues, and greetFamiliar sphinxes carved from everlasting stone,Or the fair, brittle gods of long ago,Decayed and fallen low.And there I mark the tail clepsammiaeThat time has overthrown,And empty clepsydrae,And dials drowned in umbrage never-lifting;And there, on rusty parapegms,I read the ephemeridesOf antique stars and eider planets driftingOblivionward in night;And there, with purples of the tomb bedlightAnd crowned with funereal gems,I bold awhile the throneWhereon mine immemorial selves have sate,Canopied by the triple-tinted gloryOf the three suns forever paled and flown.
I am the spectre who returnsAnd dwells content with his forlorn estateIn mansions lost and hoaryWhere no lamp burns;Who trysts within the sepulchre,And finds the ancient shadows lovelierThan gardens all emblazed with sevenfold noon,Or topaz-builded towersThat throng below some iris-pouring moon.Exiled and homeless in the younger stars,Henceforth I shah inhabit that grey climeWhose days belong to primal calendars;Nor would I come againBack to the garish terrene hours:For I am free of vaults unfathomableAnd treasures lost from time:With bat and vampire thereI fit through sombre skies immeasurableOr fly adown the unending subterranes;Mummied and ceremented,I sit in councils of the kingly dead,And oftentimes for vestiture I wearThe granite of great idols looming darklyIn atlantean fanes;Or closely now and starklyI ding as dings the attenuating airAbout the ruins bare.