I.

With stout iron shoes be my Pegasus shod!
For my road is a rough one: flint, stubble, and clod,
Blue clay, and black quagmire, brambles no few,
And I gallop up-hill, now.

There’s terror that’s true
In that tale of a youth who, one night at a revel,
Amidst music and mirth lured and wiled by some devil,
Follow’d ever one mask through the mad masquerade,
Till, pursued to some chamber deserted (’tis said),
He unmasked, with a kiss, the strange lady, and stood
Face to face with a Thing not of flesh nor of blood.
In this Mask of the Passions, call’d Life, there’s no human
Emotion, though mask’d, or in man or in woman,
But, when faced and unmask’d, it will leave us at last
Struck by some supernatural aspect aghast.
For truth is appalling and eldrich, as seen
By this world’s artificial lamplights and we screen
From our sight the strange vision that troubles our life.
Alas! why is Genius forever at strife
With the world, which, despite the world’s self, it ennobles?
Why is it that Genius perplexes and troubles
And offends the effete life it comes to renew?
’Tis the terror of truth! ’tis that Genius is true!