The City of Dreadful Night | Page 8

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
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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 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.
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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