The City of Dreadful Night | Page 7

a splendid kingly throne
A nation which beneath my
rule has grown 30 Year after year in wealth and arts and might:
I
wake from daydreams to this real night.

From preaching to an audience fired with faith
The Lamb who died to
save our souls from death,
Whose blood hath washed our scarlet sins
wool-white: 35 I wake from daydreams to this real night.
From drinking fiery poison in a den
Crowded with tawdry girls and
squalid men,
Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight:
I
wake from daydreams to this real night. 40
From picturing with all beauty and all grace
First Eden and the
parents of our race,
A luminous rapture unto all men's sight:
I wake
from daydreams to this real night.
From writing a great work with patient plan 45 To justify the ways of
God to man,
And show how ill must fade and perish quite:
I wake
from daydreams to this real night.
From desperate fighting with a little band
Against the powerful
tyrants of our land, 50 To free our brethren in their own despite:
I
wake from daydreams to this real night.
Thus, challenged by that warder sad and stern,
Each one responded
with his countersign,
Then entered the cathedral; and in turn 55 I
entered also, having given mine;
But lingered near until I heard no
more,
And marked the closing of the massive door.
XIII
Of all things human which are strange and wild
This is perchance the
wildest and most strange,
And showeth man most utterly beguiled,

To those who haunt that sunless City's range;
That he bemoans
himself for aye, repeating 5 How Time is deadly swift, how life is
fleeting,
How naught is constant on the earth but change.
The hours are heavy on him and the days;
The burden of the months
he scarce can bear;
And often in his secret soul he prays 10 To sleep
through barren periods unaware,
Arousing at some longed-for date of

pleasure;
Which having passed and yielded him small treasure,
He
would outsleep another term of care.
Yet in his marvellous fancy he must make 15 Quick wings for Time,
and see it fly from us;
This Time which crawleth like a monstrous
snake,
Wounded and slow and very venomous;
Which creeps
blindwormlike round the earth and ocean,
Distilling poison at each
painful motion, 20 And seems condemned to circle ever thus.
And since he cannot spend and use aright
The little time here given
him in trust,
But wasteth it in weary undelight
Of foolish toil and
trouble, strife and lust, 25 He naturally claimeth to inherit
The
everlasting Future, that his merit
May have full scope; as surely is
most just.
O length of the intolerable hours,
O nights that are as aeons of slow
pain, 30 O Time, too ample for our vital powers,
O Life, whose
woeful vanities remain
Immutable for all of all our legions
Through
all the centuries and in all the regions,
Not of your speed and variance
WE complain. 35
WE do not ask a longer term of strife,
Weakness and weariness and
nameless woes;
We do not claim renewed and endless life
When
this which is our torment here shall close,
An everlasting conscious
inanition! 40 We yearn for speedy death in full fruition,
Dateless
oblivion and divine repose.
XIV
Large glooms were gathered in the mighty fane,
With tinted
moongleams slanting here and there;
And all was hush: no swelling
organ-strain,
No chant, no voice or murmuring of prayer;
No priests
came forth, no tinkling censers fumed, 5 And the high altar space was
unillumed.

Around the pillars and against the walls
Leaned men and shadows;
others seemed to brood
Bent or recumbent in secluded stalls.

Perchance they were not a great multitude 10 Save in that city of so
lonely streets
Where one may count up every face he meets.
All patiently awaited the event
Without a stir or sound, as if no less

Self-occupied, doomstricken while attent. 15 And then we heard a
voice of solemn stress
From the dark pulpit, and our gaze there met

Two eyes which burned as never eyes burned yet:
Two steadfast and intolerable eyes
Burning beneath a broad and
rugged brow; 20 The head behind it of enormous size.
And as black
fir-groves in a large wind bow,
Our rooted congregation,
gloom-arrayed,
By that great sad voice deep and full were swayed:--
O melancholy Brothers, dark, dark, dark! 25 O battling in black floods
without an ark!
O spectral wanderers of unholy Night!
My soul
hath bled for you these sunless years,
With bitter blood-drops running
down like tears:
Oh dark, dark, dark, withdrawn from joy and light!
30
My heart is sick with anguish for your bale;
Your woe hath been my
anguish; yea, I quail
And perish in your perishing unblest.
And I
have searched the highths and depths, the scope
Of all our universe,
with desperate hope 35 To find some solace for your wild unrest.
And now at last authentic word I bring,
Witnessed by every dead and
living thing;
Good tidings of great joy for you, for all:
There is no
God; no Fiend with names divine 40 Made us and