The City of Dreadful Night | Page 5

and tells of his own fall,?Reserves some inmost secret good or bad: 10 The phantoms have no reticence at all:?The nudity of flesh will blush though tameless?The extreme nudity of bone grins shameless,?The unsexed skeleton mocks shroud and pall.
I have seen phantoms there that were as men 15 And men that were as phantoms flit and roam;?Marked shapes that were not living to my ken,?Caught breathings acrid as with Dead Sea foam:?The City rests for man so weird and awful,?That his intrusion there might seem unlawful, 20 And phantoms there may have their proper home.
VIII
While I still lingered on that river-walk,?And watched the tide as black as our black doom,?I heard another couple join in talk,?And saw them to the left hand in the gloom?Seated against an elm bole on the ground, 5 Their eyes intent upon the stream profound.
"I never knew another man on earth?But had some joy and solace in his life,?Some chance of triumph in the dreadful strife:?My doom has been unmitigated dearth." 10
"We gaze upon the river, and we note?The various vessels large and small that float,?Ignoring every wrecked and sunken boat."
"And yet I asked no splendid dower, no spoil?Of sway or fame or rank or even wealth; 15 But homely love with common food and health,?And nightly sleep to balance daily toil."
"This all-too-humble soul would arrogate?Unto itself some signalising hate?From the supreme indifference of Fate!" 20
"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place??I think myself; yet I would rather be?My miserable self than He, than He?Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.
"The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou 25 From whom it had its being, God and Lord!?Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred?Malignant and implacable! I vow
"That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,?For all the temples to Thy glory built, 30 Would I assume the ignominious guilt?Of having made such men in such a world."
"As if a Being, God or Fiend, could reign,?At once so wicked, foolish and insane,?As to produce men when He might refrain! 35
"The world rolls round for ever like a mill;?It grinds out death and life and good and ill;?It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.
"While air of Space and Time's full river flow?The mill must blindly whirl unresting so: 40 It may be wearing out, but who can know?
"Man might know one thing were his sight less dim;?That it whirls not to suit his petty whim,?That it is quite indifferent to him.
"Nay, does it treat him harshly as he saith? 45 It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath,?Then grinds him back into eternal death."
IX
It is full strange to him who hears and feels,?When wandering there in some deserted street,?The booming and the jar of ponderous wheels,?The trampling clash of heavy ironshod feet:?Who in this Venice of the Black Sea rideth? 5 Who in this city of the stars abideth?To buy or sell as those in daylight sweet?
The rolling thunder seems to fill the sky?As it comes on; the horses snort and strain,?The harness jingles, as it passes by; 10 The hugeness of an overburthened wain:?A man sits nodding on the shaft or trudges?Three parts asleep beside his fellow-drudges:?And so it rolls into the night again.
What merchandise? whence, whither, and for whom? 15 Perchance it is a Fate-appointed hearse,?Bearing away to some mysterious tomb?Or Limbo of the scornful universe?The joy, the peace, the life-hope, the abortions?Of all things good which should have been our portions, 20 But have been strangled by that City's curse.
X
The mansion stood apart in its own ground;?In front thereof a fragrant garden-lawn,?High trees about it, and the whole walled round:?The massy iron gates were both withdrawn;?And every window of its front shed light, 5 Portentous in that City of the Night.
But though thus lighted it was deadly still?As all the countless bulks of solid gloom;?Perchance a congregation to fulfil?Solemnities of silence in this doom, 10 Mysterious rites of dolour and despair?Permitting not a breath or chant of prayer?
Broad steps ascended to a terrace broad?Whereon lay still light from the open door;?The hall was noble, and its aspect awed, 15 Hung round with heavy black 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