Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/50

 Two steadfast and intolerable eyes Burning beneath a broad and rugged brow; The head behind it of enormous size. And as black fir-groves in a large wind bow, Our rooted congregation, gloom -arrayed, By that great sad voice deep and full were swayed:—

O melancholy Brothers, dark, dark, dark! O battling in black floods without an ark! O spectral wanderers of unholy Night! My soul hath bled for you these sunless years, With bitter blood-drops running down like tears: Oh, dark, dark, dark, withdrawn from joy and light!

My heart is sick with anguish for your bale; Your woe hath been my anguish; yea, I quail And perish in your perishing unblest. And I have searched the highths and depths, the scope Of all our universe, with desperate hope To find some solace for your wild unrest.

And now at last authentic word I bring, Witnessed by every dead and living thing; Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: There is no God; no Fiend with names divine Made us and tortures us; if we must pine, It is to satiate no Being's gall.