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Lo ! Death
has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying
alone
Far down within the dim West,
Wherethe good
and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to
their eternal rest.
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
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 -
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 scultured ivy and stone
flowers -
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the
violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
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
Yawn level with the luminous waves ;
But
not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond
eye -
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters
from their bed ;
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
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 thrown aside,
In slightly sinking, the
dull tide -
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,
Down, down that town
shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand
thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
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