The City of Dreadful Night

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
  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?
 
 
  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:
    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,
  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
    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.
 
 
  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,
    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?
  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,
    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,
    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.
 

XVII

 
  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
  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;
    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 eyes shine,
    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,
    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:
  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,
  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,
  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
    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
  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,
    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?
 
 
  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,
  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:
  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;
    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
  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;
    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:
 
 
  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,
  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,
  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!
    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.