The City of Dreadful Night

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    The massy iron gates were both withdrawn;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,

  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,

  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,

    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;

  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;

    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.

  At length I heard a murmur as of lips,

    And reached an open oratory hung

  With heaviest blackness of the whole eclipse;

    Beneath the dome a fuming censer swung;

  And one lay there upon a low white bed,

  With tapers burning at the foot and head:

  The Lady of the images, supine,

    Deathstill, lifesweet, with folded palms she lay:

  And kneeling there as at a sacred shrine

    A young man wan and worn who seemed to pray:

  A crucifix of dim and ghostly white

  Surmounted the large altar left in night:—

  The chambers of the mansion of my heart,

    In every one whereof thine image dwells,

  Are black with grief eternal for thy sake.

  The inmost oratory of my soul,

  Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead,

  Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.

  I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross,

  With eyes forever fixed upon that face,

  So beautiful and dreadful in its calm.

  I kneel here patient as thou liest there;

  As patient as a statue carved in stone,

  Of adoration and eternal grief.

  While thou dost not awake I cannot move;

  And something tells me thou wilt never wake,

  And I alive feel turning into stone.

  Most beautiful were Death to end my grief,

  Most hateful to destroy the sight of thee,

  Dear vision better than all death or life.

  But I renounce all choice of life or death,

  For either shall be ever at thy side,

  And thus in bliss or woe be ever well.—

  He murmured thus and thus in monotone,

    Intent upon that uncorrupted face,

  Entranced except his moving lips alone:

    I glided with hushed footsteps from the place.

  This was the festival that filled with light

  That palace in the City of the Night.

XI

  What men are they who haunt these fatal glooms,

    And fill their living mouths with dust of death,

  And make their habitations in the tombs,

    And breathe eternal sighs with mortal breath,

  And pierce life's pleasant veil of various error

  To reach that void of darkness and old terror

    Wherein expire the lamps of hope and faith?

  They have much wisdom yet they are not wise,

    They have much goodness yet they do not well,

  (The fools we know have their own paradise,

    The wicked also have their proper Hell);

  They have much strength but still their doom is stronger,

  Much patience but their time endureth longer,

    Much valour but life mocks it with some spell.

  They are most rational and yet insane:

    And outward madness not to be controlled;

  A perfect reason in the central brain,

    Which has no power, but sitteth wan and cold,

  And sees the madness, and foresees as plainly

  The ruin in its path, and trieth vainly

    To cheat itself refusing to behold.

  And some are great in rank and wealth and power,

    And some renowned for genius and for worth;

  And some are poor and mean, who brood and cower

    And shrink from notice, and accept all dearth

  Of body, heart and soul, and leave to others

  All boons of life: yet these and those are brothers,

    The saddest and the weariest men on earth.

XII

  Our isolated units could be brought

    To act together for some common end?

  For one by one, each silent with his thought,

    I marked a long loose line approach and wend

  Athwart the great cathedral's cloistered square,

  And slowly vanish from the moonlit air.

  Then I would follow in among the last:

    And in the porch a shrouded figure stood,

  Who challenged each one pausing ere he passed,

    With deep eyes burning through a blank white hood:

  Whence come you in the world of life and light

  To this our City of Tremendous Night?—

  From pleading in a senate of rich lords

  For some scant justice to our countless hordes

  Who toil half-starved with scarce a human right:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From wandering through many a solemn scene

  Of opium visions, with a heart serene

  And intellect miraculously bright:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From making hundreds laugh and roar with glee

  By my transcendent feats of mimicry,

  And humour wanton as an elvish sprite:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From prayer and fasting in a lonely cell,

  Which brought an ecstasy ineffable

  Of love and adoration and delight:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From ruling on a splendid kingly throne

  A nation which beneath my rule has grown

  Year after year in wealth and arts and might:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From preaching to an audience fired with faith

  The Lamb who died to save our souls from death,

  Whose blood hath washed our scarlet sins wool-white:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From drinking fiery poison in a den

  Crowded with tawdry girls and squalid men,

  Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight:

  I wake from daydreams to this real night.

  From picturing with all beauty and all