網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

I.

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.

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

II.

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 sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine,
Whose wreathéd 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.

III.

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.

IV.

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,-
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.

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Ar midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim ;
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain-top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary

nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake

A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!-and, lo! where lies
(Her casement open to the skies)
Irene, with her Destinies !

II.

Oh, lady bright! can it be right,
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs from the tree-top
Laughingly through the lattice drop;
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy

So fitfully-so fearfully

Above the closed and fringed lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear! hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!

E

« 上一頁繼續 »