Hoarding of ecstasies, a great place of lusts
Achieved and shining fixt; for every man
Is mine, and every soil is mine, from here
Round to the furthest cliffs that steadfast are
To keep the hoofs of the sea from murdering
The tilled leagues of the land.  And by the coasts
I am not kept.  Far into the room of waters,
Into the blue middle of ocean’s summer,
The white gait of my sea-going war invades. 
  I have a man here, one who makes with words,
And he shall be my messenger to your hearts. 
Not to make much of me; but he’s the speech
Of Spirit,—­I the dangerous exultation,
The Spirit’s sacred joy in wrath against
The heaps of its own spent kinds, melting anew
To found in another image of itself. 
He is the man to shew you, withinside
The flashing and exclaim of my great moving
About the places of the world; within
The heat of my pleasure that has molten down,
Like ingots in a furnace, all your nations
Into my likeness treading on the earth;
Within the smokes that make your eyes pour grief,
This gleam of infinite purpose quietly nested,—­
That I am given the world, and that my pleasure
Is plain the latest word spoken by God. 
So while our senses go among these wines,
Wander in green deliciousness and crimson,
And fragrance searches the else-unsearchable brain,
Poet, tell out the glory of the king.

The Poet. 
The glory of the king of all the kings.—­
You with the golden power on your brows,
You kings, I think you know not what you are. 
First you shall learn yourselves:  for neither light
Understandeth itself, nor darkness light. 
You see your glory; but you cannot see
That which your glory conquers; and the peoples
Know nought but that the glooming of their night
Maketh a shining scope for crowns, as he,
Even as he, your king, Ahasuerus,
Maketh your splendour a darkness for his light. 
But I, neither belonging to the kings
Nor to the people, only I may know
The golden fortune of light anointing kings. 
Come with me now, and take my vision awhile. 
  The people of this world are misery. 
What doth Man here?  How thinketh God on him? 
Surely he was sent here as if thereby
God might forget him.  Like infamous desire
A wise heart puts aside, which yet remains
A secret hated memory, man was
In God, and is vainly discarded here. 
I see him coming here; I see man’s life
Falling into this base and desert ground,
This world that seems an evil riddance thrown
Down by the winds of God’s swift purposes;
Some shame of grossness, that would cling upon
The errand of their holy speed, and here
Heapt up and strewn into the place wherein
The mind and being of man wander darkly. 
Behold him coming here!—­Against my sight,
Warning aback the gleam of sacred heaven,
Is vast forbiddance raised; creatures like hills,