The City of Dreadful Night | Page 6

from dome to floor;
And ample stairways
rose to left and right
Whose balustrades were also draped with night.

I paced from room to room, from hall to hall,
Nor any life throughout
the maze discerned; 20 But each was hung with its funereal pall,
And
held a shrine, around which tapers burned,
With picture or with statue
or with bust,
all copied from the same fair form of dust:
A woman very young and very fair; 25 Beloved by bounteous life and
joy and youth,
And loving these sweet lovers, so that care
And age
and death seemed not for her in sooth:
Alike as stars, all beautiful and
bright,
these shapes lit up that mausolean night. 30
At length I heard a murmur as of lips,
And reached an open oratory
hung
With heaviest blackness of the whole eclipse;
Beneath the
dome a fuming censer swung;
And one lay there upon a low white
bed, 35 With tapers burning at the foot and head:
The Lady of the images, supine,
Deathstill, lifesweet, with folded
palms she lay:
And kneeling there as at a sacred shrine
A young
man wan and worn who seemed to pray: 40 A crucifix of dim and
ghostly white
Surmounted the large altar left in night:--
The chambers of the mansion of my heart,
In every one whereof thine
image dwells,
Are black with grief eternal for thy sake. 45
The inmost oratory of my soul,
Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or
dead,
Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.
I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross,
With eyes forever fixed upon
that face, 50 So beautiful and dreadful in its calm.
I kneel here patient as thou liest there;
As patient as a statue carved in
stone,
Of adoration and eternal grief.
While thou dost not awake I cannot move; 55 And something tells me
thou wilt never wake,
And I alive feel turning into stone.

Most beautiful were Death to end my grief,
Most hateful to destroy
the sight of thee,
Dear vision better than all death or life. 60
But I renounce all choice of life or death,
For either shall be ever at
thy side,
And thus in bliss or woe be ever well.--
He murmured thus and thus in monotone,
Intent upon that
uncorrupted face, 65 Entranced except his moving lips alone:
I glided
with hushed footsteps from the place.
This was the festival that filled
with light
That palace in the City of the Night.
XI
What men are they who haunt these fatal glooms,
And fill their living
mouths with dust of death,
And make their habitations in the tombs,

And breathe eternal sighs with mortal breath,
And pierce life's
pleasant veil of various error 5 To reach that void of darkness and old
terror
Wherein expire the lamps of hope and faith?
They have much wisdom yet they are not wise,
They have much
goodness yet they do not well,
(The fools we know have their own
paradise, 10 The wicked also have their proper Hell);
They have
much strength but still their doom is stronger,
Much patience but
their time endureth longer,
Much valour but life mocks it with some
spell.
They are most rational and yet insane: 15 And outward madness not to
be controlled;
A perfect reason in the central brain,
Which has no
power, but sitteth wan and cold,
And sees the madness, and foresees
as plainly
The ruin in its path, and trieth vainly 20 To cheat itself
refusing to behold.
And some are great in rank and wealth and power,
And some
renowned for genius and for worth;
And some are poor and mean,
who brood and cower
And shrink from notice, and accept all dearth

25 Of body, heart and soul, and leave to others
All boons of life: yet
these and those are brothers,
The saddest and the weariest men on
earth.
XII
Our isolated units could be brought
To act together for some common
end?
For one by one, each silent with his thought,
I marked a long
loose line approach and wend
Athwart the great cathedral's cloistered
square, 5 And slowly vanish from the moonlit air.
Then I would follow in among the last:
And in the porch a shrouded
figure stood,
Who challenged each one pausing ere he passed,
With
deep eyes burning through a blank white hood: 10 Whence come you in
the world of life and light
To this our City of Tremendous Night?--
From pleading in a senate of rich lords
For some scant justice to our
countless hordes
Who toil half-starved with scarce a human right: 15
I wake from daydreams to this real night.
From wandering through many a solemn scene
Of opium visions,
with a heart serene
And intellect miraculously bright:
I wake from
daydreams to this real night. 20
From making hundreds laugh and roar with glee
By my transcendent
feats of mimicry,
And humour wanton as an elvish sprite:
I wake
from daydreams to this real night.
From prayer and fasting in a lonely cell, 25 Which brought an ecstasy
ineffable
Of love and adoration and delight:
I wake from daydreams
to this real night.
From ruling on