| |
| LO! Death has reared himself a throne | |
| In a strange city lying alone | |
| Far down within the dim West, | |
| Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best | |
| Have gone to their eternal rest. | 5 |
| There shrines and palaces and towers | |
| (Time-eaten towers that tremble not) | |
| Resemble nothing that is ours. | |
| Around, by lifting winds forgot, | |
| Resignedly beneath the sky | 10 |
| The melancholy waters lie. | |
| |
| No rays from the holy heaven come down | |
| On the long night-time of that town; | |
| But light from out the lurid sea | |
| Streams up the turrets silently, | 15 |
| Gleams up the pinnacles far and free: | |
| Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls, | |
| Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls, | |
| Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers | |
| Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers, | 20 |
| Up many and many a marvellous shrine | |
| Whose wreathëd friezes intertwine | |
| The viol, the violet, and the vine. | |
| |
| Resignedly beneath the sky | |
| The melancholy waters lie. | 25 |
| So blend the turrets and shadows there | |
| That all seem pendulous in air, | |
| While from a proud tower in the town | |
| Death looks gigantically down. | |
| |
| There open fanes and gaping graves | 30 |
| Yawn level with the luminous waves; | |
| But not the riches there that lie | |
| In each idol’s diamond eye,— | |
| Not the gayly-jewelled dead, | |
| Tempt the waters from their bed; | 35 |
| For no ripples curl, alas, | |
| Along that wilderness of glass; | |
| No swellings tell that winds may be | |
| Upon some far-off happier sea; | |
| No heavings hint that winds have been | 40 |
| On seas less hideously serene! | |
| |
| But lo, a stir is in the air! | |
| The wave—there is a movement there! | |
| As if the towers had thrust aside, | |
| In slightly sinking, the dull tide; | 45 |
| As if their tops had feebly given | |
| A void within the filmy Heaven! | |
| The waves have now a redder glow, | |
| The hours are breathing faint and low; | |
| And when, amid no earthly moans, | 50 |
| Down, down that town shall settle hence, | |
| Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, | |
| Shall do it reverence. | |
| |
