The City of Dreadful Night | Page 2

slope it lies at large
And scarcely overlaps the long
curved crest 30 Which swells out two leagues from the river marge.

A trackless wilderness rolls north and west,
Savannahs, savage woods,
enormous mountains,
Bleak uplands, black ravines with torrent
fountains;
And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest. 35
The city is not ruinous, although
Great ruins of an unremembered
past,
With others of a few short years ago
More sad, are found
within its precincts vast.
The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a
casement 40 In house or palace front from roof to basement
Doth
glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast.
The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless
solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs. 45
The silence which benumbs or strains the sense
Fulfils with awe the
soul's despair unweeping:
Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping,

Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence!

Yet as in some necropolis you find 50 Perchance one mourner to a
thousand dead,
So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind
Like
tragic masks of stone. With weary tread,
Each wrapt in his own doom,
they wander, wander,
Or sit foredone and desolately ponder 55
Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.
Mature men chiefly, few in age or youth,
A woman rarely, now and
then a child:
A child! If here the heart turns sick with ruth
To see a
little one from birth defiled, 60 Or lame or blind, as preordained to
languish
Through youthless life, think how it bleeds with anguish

To meet one erring in that homeless wild.
They often murmur to themselves, they speak
To one another seldom,
for their woe 65 Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak

Itself abroad; and if at whiles it grow
To frenzy which must rave,
none heeds the clamour,
Unless there waits some victim of like
glamour,
To rave in turn, who lends attentive show. 70
The City is of Night, but not of Sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the
weary brain;
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
A night
seems termless hell. This dreadful strain
Of thought and
consciousness which never ceases, 75 Or which some moments' stupor
but increases,
This, worse than woe, makes wretches there insane.
They leave all hope behind who enter there:
One certitude while sane
they cannot leave,
One anodyne for torture and despair; 80 The
certitude of Death, which no reprieve
Can put off long; and which,
divinely tender,
But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render

That draught whose slumber nothing can bereave
[1] Though the Garden of thy Life be wholly waste, the sweet flowers
withered, the fruit-trees barren, over its wall hang ever the rich dark
clusters of the Vine of Death, within easy reach of thy hand, which may
pluck of them when it will.

II
Because he seemed to walk with an intent
I followed him; who,
shadowlike and frail,
Unswervingly though slowly onward went,

Regardless, wrapt in thought as in a veil:
Thus step for step with
lonely sounding feet 5 We travelled many a long dim silent street.
At length he paused: a black mass in the gloom,
A tower that merged
into the heavy sky;
Around, the huddled stones of grave and tomb:

Some old God's-acre now corruption's sty: 10 He murmured to himself
with dull despair,
Here Faith died, poisoned by this charnel air.
Then turning to the right went on once more
And travelled weary
roads without suspense;
And reached at last a low wall's open door,
15 Whose villa gleamed beyond the foliage dense:
He gazed, and
muttered with a hard despair,
Here Love died, stabbed by its own
worshipped pair.
Then turning to the right resumed his march,
And travelled street and
lanes with wondrous strength, 20 Until on stooping through a narrow
arch
We stood before a squalid house at length:
He gazed, and
whispered with a cold despair,
Here Hope died, starved out in its
utmost lair.
When he had spoken thus, before he stirred, 25 I spoke, perplexed by
something in the signs
Of desolation I had seen and heard
In this
drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:
Where Faith and Love and Hope
are dead indeed,
Can Life still live? By what doth it proceed? 30
As whom his one intense thought overpowers,
He answered coldly,
Take a watch, erase
The signs and figures of the circling hours,

Detach the hands, remove the dial-face;
The works proceed until run
down; although 35 Bereft of purpose, void of use, still go.
Then turning to the right paced on again,
And traversed squares and

travelled streets whose glooms
Seemed more and more familiar to my
ken;
And reached that sullen temple of the tombs; 40 And paused to
murmur with the old despair,
Hear Faith died, poisoned by this
charnel air.
I ceased to follow, for the knot of doubt
Was severed sharply with a
cruel knife:
He circled thus forever tracing out 45 The series of the
fraction left of Life;
Perpetual recurrence in the scope
Of but three
terms, dead Faith, dead Love, dead Hope.[1]
LXX
[1] Life divided by that persistent three = --- = .210.
333
III
Although lamps