The City of Dreadful Night | Page 9

answer for a certain while, 45
For words must shrink from these most wordless woes;
At last the
pulpit speaker simply said,
With humid eyes and thoughtful drooping
head:--
My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus;
This life itself holds nothing
good for us, 50 But ends soon and nevermore can be;
And we knew
nothing of it ere our birth,
And shall know nothing when consigned to
earth:
I ponder these thoughts and they comfort me.

XVII
How the moon triumphs through the endless nights!
How the stars
throb and glitter as they wheel
Their thick processions of supernal
lights
Around the blue vault obdurate as steel!
And men regard with
passionate awe and yearning 5 The mighty marching and the golden
burning,
And think the heavens respond to what they feel.
Boats gliding like dark shadows of a dream
Are glorified from vision
as they pass
The quivering moonbridge on the deep black stream; 10
Cold windows kindle their dead glooms of glass
To restless crystals;
cornice dome and column
Emerge from chaos in the splendour
solemn;
Like faery lakes gleam lawns of dewy grass.
With such a living light these dead eyes shine, 15 These eyes of
sightless heaven, that as we gaze
We read a pity, tremulous, divine,

Or cold majestic scorn in their pure rays:
Fond man! they are not
haughty, are not tender;
There is no heart or mind in all their
splendour, 20 They thread mere puppets all their marvellous maze.
If we could near them with the flight unflown,
We should but find
them worlds as sad as this,
Or suns all self-consuming like our own

Enringed by planet worlds as much amiss: 25 They wax and wane
through fusion and confusion;
The spheres eternal are a grand illusion,

The empyrean is a void abyss.
XVIII
I wandered in a suburb of the north,
And reached a spot whence three
close lanes led down,
Beneath thick trees and hedgerows winding
forth
Like deep brook channels, deep and dark and lown:
The air
above was wan with misty light, 5 The dull grey south showed one
vague blur of white.
I took the left-hand path and slowly trod
Its earthen footpath,

brushing as I went
The humid leafage; and my feet were shod
With
heavy languor, and my frame downbent, 10 With infinite sleepless
weariness outworn,
So many nights I thus had paced forlorn.
After a hundred steps I grew aware
Of something crawling in the lane
below;
It seemed a wounded creature prostrate there 15 That sobbed
with pangs in making progress slow,
The hind limbs stretched to push,
the fore limbs then
To drag; for it would die in its own den.
But coming level with it I discerned
That it had been a man; for at my
tread 20 It stopped in its sore travail and half-turned,
Leaning upon its
right, and raised its head,
And with the left hand twitched back as in
ire
Long grey unreverend locks befouled with mire.
A haggard filthy face with bloodshot eyes, 25 An infamy for manhood
to behold.
He gasped all trembling, What, you want my prize?
You
leave, to rob me, wine and lust and gold
And all that men go mad
upon, since you
Have traced my sacred secret of the clue? 30
You think that I am weak and must submit
Yet I but scratch you with
this poisoned blade,
And you are dead as if I clove with it
That
false fierce greedy heart. Betrayed! betrayed!
I fling this phial if you
seek to pass, 35 And you are forthwith shrivelled up like grass.
And then with sudden change, Take thought! take thought!
Have pity
on me! it is mine alone.
If you could find, it would avail you naught;

Seek elsewhere on the pathway of your own: 40 For who of mortal
or immortal race
The lifetrack of another can retrace?
Did you but know my agony and toil!
Two lanes diverge up yonder
from this lane;
My thin blood marks the long length of their soil; 45
Such clue I left, who sought my clue in vain:
My hands and knees are
worn both flesh and bone;
I cannot move but with continual moan.
But I am in the very way at last
To find the long-lost broken golden

thread 50 Which unites my present with my past,
If you but go your
own way. And I said,
I will retire as soon as you have told

Whereunto leadeth this lost thread of gold.
And so you know it not! he hissed with scorn; 55 I feared you, imbecile!
It leads me back
From this accursed night without a morn,
And
through the deserts which have else no track,
And through vast
wastes of horror-haunted time,
To Eden innocence in Eden's clime:
60
And I become a nursling soft and pure,
An infant cradled on its
mother's knee,
Without a past, love-cherished and secure;
Which if
it saw this loathsome present Me,
Would plunge its face into the
pillowing breast, 65 And scream abhorrence hard to lull to rest.
He turned to grope; and I retiring brushed
Thin shreds of gossamer
from off my face,
And mused, His life