A Dream in Fever

A vast screen of unequal downward lines,
An orange purple halo 'round the rain,
Twists from a space whose very size is pain.
Here in this vortex day with night combines;
Ruby and Emerald glint their blazing spines;
Closing and smothering, wheels a brazen main,
A shuddering sea of silence; in its train
A Thought--a cry, whose snake--fear trembling twines
Around--above--alive yet uttered not;
But my heart hears--and shrieking dies of dread,
Then soaring breaks its bands and o'er the rim
White winged it rends the dark with jagged blot,
Glimpsing the iris gateway barred ahead,
And, gazing thro', the eyes of cherubim.