Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/53

 Our shadowy congregation rested still As brooding on that "End it when you will."

Wherever men are gathered, all the air Is charged with human feeling, human thought; Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer, Are into its vibrations surely wrought; Unspoken passion, wordless meditation, Are breathed into it with our respiration; It is with our life fraught and overfraught.

So that no man there breathes earth's simple breath, As if alone on mountains or wide seas; But nourishes warm life or hastens death With joys and sorrows, health and foul disease, Wisdom and folly, good and evil labours, Incessant of his multitudinous neighbours; He in his turn affecting all of these.

That City's atmosphere is dark and dense, Although not many exiles wander there, With many a potent evil influence, Each adding poison to the poisoned air;