Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/35

 Some say that phantoms haunt those shadowy streets, And mingle freely there with sparse mankind; And tell of ancient woes and black defeats, And murmur mysteries in the grave enshrined: But others think them visions of illusion, Or even men gone far in self-confusion; No man there being wholly sane in mind.

And yet a man who raves, however mad, Who bares his heart and tells of his own fall, Reserves some inmost secret good or bad: The phantoms have no reticence at all: The nudity of flesh will blush though tameless, The extreme nudity of bone grins shameless, The unsexed skeleton mocks shroud and pall.

I have seen phantoms there that were as men And men that were as phantoms flit and roam; Marked shapes that were not living to my ken, Caught breathings acrid as with Dead Sea foam: The City rests for man so weird and awful, That his intrusion there might seem unlawful, And phantoms there may have their proper home.