The City of Dreadful Night | Page 9

James Thomson
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 would grow, the germ uncrushed;?He should to antenatal night retrace, 70 And hide his elements in that large womb?Beyond the reach of man-evolving Doom.
And even thus, what weary way were planned,?To seek oblivion through the far-off gate?Of birth, when that of death is close at hand! 75 For this is law, if law there be in Fate:?What never has been, yet may have its when;?The thing which has been, never is again.
XIX
The mighty river flowing dark and deep,?With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides?Vague-sounding through the City's sleepless sleep,?Is named the River of the Suicides;?For night by night some lorn wretch overweary, 5 And shuddering from the future yet more dreary,?Within its cold secure oblivion hides.
One plunges from a bridge's parapet,?As if by some blind and sudden frenzy hurled;?Another wades in slow with purpose set 10 Until the waters are above him furled;?Another in a boat with dreamlike motion?Glides drifting down into the desert ocean,?To starve or sink from out the desert world.
They perish from their suffering surely thus, 15 For none beholding them attempts to save,?The while thinks how soon, solicitous,?He may seek refuge in the self-same wave;?Some
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