Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/40

 Mysterious rites of dolour and despair Permitting not a breath or chant of prayer?

Broad steps ascended to a terrace broad Whereon lay still light from the open door; The hall was noble, and its aspect awed, Hung round with heavy black from dome to floor; And ample stairways rose to left and right Whose balustrades were also draped with night.

I paced from room to room, from hall to hall, Nor any life throughout the maze discerned; But each was hung with its funereal pall, And held a shrine, around which tapers burned, With picture or with statue or with bust, all copied from the same fair form of dust:

A woman very young and very fair; Beloved by bounteous life and joy and youth, And loving these sweet lovers, so that care And age and death seemed not for her in sooth: Alike as stars, all beautiful and bright, these shapes lit up that mausoléan night.