The City of Dreadful Night | Page 4

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 Limbo's dreary scope,?We yet may pick up some minute lost hope; 60
And sharing it between us, entrance win,?In spite of fiends so jealous for gross sin:?Let us without delay our search begin.
VII
Some say that phantoms haunt those shadowy streets,?And mingle freely there with sparse mankind;?And tell of ancient woes and black defeats,?And murmur mysteries in the grave enshrined:?But others think them visions of illusion, 5 Or even men gone far in self-confusion;?No man there being wholly sane in mind.
And yet a man who raves, however mad,?Who bares his heart