The Return of Hyperion

The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus Are close beyond the mountains That are bound like a giant's girdle About the unstirred, unbreathing east. Alike on mountain and plain The night is as some iron dream That closes the soul in a crypt of dread, Apart from touch or sense of earth, As in the space of eternity.

What unseen light perturbs the darkness ? Behold ! it stirs and fluctuates Between the mountains and the stars That are set as guards above the prison Of the captive Titan-god. I know That in the depths beneath, Hyperion Divides the pillared vault of dark And briefly stands upon its ruin. Then light is laid upon the peaks, As the hand of one who climbs beyond; And now, the sun ! The sentinel stars Are dead with overpotent flame, And in their place Hyperion stands. The night is loosened from the land As a dream from the mind of the dreamer; A great wind blows across the dawn, Like the wind of the movement of the world.