The City of Dreadful Night | Page 4

clear;
Mad rage had swallowed fear.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the
desert: By the sea
She knelt and bent above that senseless me; 90
Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,
She tried to cleanse
them with her tears and hair;
She murmured words of pity, love, and
woe,
Shee heeded not the level rushing flow:
And mad with rage
and fear, 95 I stood stonebound so near.
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the
desert: When the tide
Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,

She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne 100 Away, and
this vile me was left forlorn;
I know the whole sea cannot quench that
heart,
Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:
They love;
their doom is drear,
Yet they nor hope nor fear; 105 But I, what do I
here?
V
How he arrives there none can clearly know;
Athwart the mountains
and immense wild tracts,
Or flung a waif upon that vast sea-flow,

Or down the river's boiling cataracts:
To reach it is as dying
fever-stricken 5 To leave it, slow faint birth intense pangs quicken;

And memory swoons in both the tragic acts.
But being there one feels a citizen;
Escape seems hopeless to the
heart forlorn:
Can Death-in-Life be brought to life again? 10 And yet
release does come; there comes a morn
When he awakes from
slumbering so sweetly
That all the world is changed for him
completely,
And he is verily as if new-born.
He scarcely can believe the blissful change, 15 He weeps perchance

who wept not while accurst;
Never again will he approach the range

Infected by that evil spell now burst:
Poor wretch! who once hath
paced that dolent city
Shall pace it often, doomed beyond all pity, 20
With horror ever deepening from the first.
Though he possess sweet babes and loving wife,
A home of peace by
loyal friendships cheered,
And love them more than death or happy
life,
They shall avail not; he must dree his weird; 25 Renounce all
blessings for that imprecation,
Steal forth and haunt that builded
desolation,
Of woe and terrors and thick darkness reared.
VI
I sat forlornly by the river-side,
And watched the bridge-lamps glow
like golden stars
Above the blackness of the swelling tide,
Down
which they struck rough gold in ruddier bars;
And heard the heave
and plashing of the flow 5 Against the wall a dozen feet below.
Large elm-trees stood along that river-walk;
And under one, a few
steps from my seat,
I heard strange voices join in stranger talk,

Although I had not heard approaching feet: 10 These bodiless voices in
my waking dream
Flowed dark words blending with sombre stream:--
And you have after all come back; come back.
I was about to follow
on your track.
And you have failed: our spark of hope is black. 15
That I have failed is proved by my return:
The spark is quenched, nor
ever more will burn,
But listen; and the story you shall learn.
I reached the portal common spirits fear,
And read the words above it,
dark yet clear, 20 "Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here:"
And would have passed in, gratified to gain
That positive eternity of
pain
Instead of this insufferable inane.
A demon warder clutched me, Not so fast; 25 First leave your hopes

behind!--But years have passed
Since I left all behind me, to the last:
You cannot count for hope, with all your wit,
This bleak despair that
drives me to the Pit:
How could I seek to enter void of it? 30
He snarled, What thing is this which apes a soul,
And would find
entrance to our gulf of dole
Without the payment of the settled toll?
Outside the gate he showed an open chest:
Here pay their entrance
fees the souls unblest; 35 Cast in some hope, you enter with the rest.
This is Pandora's box; whose lid shall shut,
And Hell-gate too, when
hopes have filled it; but
They are so thin that it will never glut.
I stood a few steps backwards, desolate; 40 And watched the spirits
pass me to their fate,
And fling off hope, and enter at the gate.
When one casts off a load he springs upright,
Squares back his
shoulders, breathes will all his might,
And briskly paces forward
strong and light: 45
But these, as if they took some burden, bowed;
The whole frame sank;
however strong and proud
Before, they crept in quite infirm and
cowed.
And as they passed me, earnestly from each
A morsel of his hope I
did beseech, 50 To pay my entrance; but all mocked my speech.
No one would cede a little of his store,
Though knowing that in
instants three or four
He must resign the whole for evermore.
So I returned. Our destiny is fell; 55 For in this Limbo we must ever
dwell,
Shut out alike from heaven and Earth and Hell.
The other sighed back, Yea; but if we grope
With care through all this