The City of Dreadful Night | Page 8

tortures us; if we
must pine,
It is to satiate no Being's gall.
It was the dark delusion of a dream,
That living Person conscious and
supreme,
Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; 45 Whom we
must curse because the life he gave
Could not be buried in the quiet
grave,
Could not be killed by poison or the knife.

This little life is all we must endure,
The grave's most holy peace is
ever sure, 50 We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us
but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh

In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.
We finish thus; and all our wretched race 55 Shall finish with its cycle,
and give place
To other beings with their own time-doom:
Infinite
aeons ere our kind began;
Infinite aeons after the last man
Has
joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb. 60
We bow down to the universal laws,
Which never had for man a
special clause
Of cruelty or kindness, love or hate:
If toads and
vultures are obscene to sight,
If tigers burn with beauty and with
might, 65 Is it by favour or by wrath of Fate?
All substance lives and struggles evermore
Through countless shapes
continually at war,
By countless interactions interknit:
If one is
born a certain day on earth, 70 All times and forces tended to that birth,

Not all the world could change or hinder it.
I find no hint throughout the Universe
Of good or ill, of blessing or of
curse;
I find alone Necessity Supreme; 75 With infinite Mystery,
abysmal, dark,
Unlighted ever by the faintest spark
For us the
flitting shadows of a dream.
O Brothers of sad lives! they are so brief;
A few short years must
bring us all relief: 80 Can we not bear these years of laboring breath?

But if you would not this poor life fulfil,
Lo, you are free to end it
when you will,
Without the fear of waking after death.--
The organ-like vibrations of his voice 85 Thrilled through the vaulted
aisles and died away;
The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice

Was sad and tender as a requiem lay:
Our shadowy congregation
rested still
As brooding on that "End it when you will." 90

XV
Wherever men are gathered, all the air
Is charged with human feeling,
human thought;
Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer,

Are into its vibrations surely wrought;
Unspoken passion, wordless
meditation, 5 Are breathed into it with our respiration
It is with our
life fraught and overfraught.
So that no man there breathes earth's simple breath,
As if alone on
mountains or wide seas;
But nourishes warm life or hastens death 10
With joys and sorrows, health and foul disease,
Wisdom and folly,
good and evil labours,
Incessant of his multitudinous neighbors;
He
in his turn affecting all of these.
That City's atmosphere is dark and dense, 15 Although not many exiles
wander there,
With many a potent evil influence,
Each adding
poison to the poisoned air;
Infections of unutterable sadness,

Infections of incalculable madness, 20 Infections of incurable despair.
XVI
Our shadowy congregation rested still,
As musing on that message
we had heard
And brooding on that "End it when you will;"

Perchance awaiting yet some other word;
When keen as lightning
through a muffled sky 5 Sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry:--
The man speaks sooth, alas! the man speaks sooth:
We have no
personal life beyond the grave;
There is no God; Fate knows nor
wrath nor ruth:
Can I find here the comfort which I crave? 10
In all eternity I had one chance,
One few years' term of gracious
human life:
The splendours of the intellect's advance,
The
sweetness of the home with babes and wife;
The social pleasures with their genial wit: 15 The fascination of the
worlds of art,
The glories of the worlds of nature, lit
By large

imagination's glowing heart;
The rapture of mere being, full of health;
The careless childhood and
the ardent youth, 20 The strenuous manhood winning various wealth,

The reverend age serene with life's long truth:
All the sublime prerogatives of Man;
The storied memories of the
times of old,
The patient tracking of the world's great plan 25
Through sequences and changes myriadfold.
This chance was never offered me before;
For me this infinite Past is
blank and dumb:
This chance recurreth never, nevermore;
Blank,
blank for me the infinite To-come. 30
And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth,
A mockery, a
delusion; and my breath
Of noble human life upon this earth
So
racks me that I sigh for senseless death.
My wine of life is poison mixed with gall, 35 My noonday passes in a
nightmare dream,
I worse than lose the years which are my all:

What can console me for the loss supreme?
Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,
Speak not at all: can
words make foul things fair? 40 Our life's a cheat, our death a black
abyss:
Hush and be mute envisaging despair.--
This vehement voice came from the northern aisle
Rapid and shrill to
its abrupt harsh close;
And none gave