Explore "Opium" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_On reading De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater. "_
I seemed to stand before a temple walled / From shadows and night's unrealities; / Filled with dark music of dead memories, / And voices, lost in darkness, aye that called. / I entered. And, beneath the dome's high-halled / Immensity, one forced me to my knees / Before a blackness -- throned 'mid semblances / And spectres -- crowned with flames of emerald. / Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears / The names of Horror and Oblivion, / Priests of this god, -- and bade me die and dream. / Then, in the heart of hell, a thousand years / Meseemed I lay -- dead; while the iron stream / Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one.