Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/65

 Again I sank in that repose unsweet, Again a clashing noise my slumber rent; The warrior's sword lay broken at his feet: An unarmed man with raised hands impotent Now stood before the sphinx, which ever kept Such mien as if with open eyes it slept.

My eyelids sank in spite of wonder grown; A louder crash upstartled me in dread: The man had fallen forward, stone on stone, And lay there shattered, with his trunkless head Between the monster's large quiescent paws, Beneath its grand front changeless as life's laws.

The moon had circled westward full and bright, And made the temple-front a mystic dream, And bathed the whole enclosure with its light, The sworded angel's wrecks, the sphinx supreme: I pondered long that cold majestic face Whose vision seemed of infinite void space.

Anear the centre of that northern crest Stands out a level upland bleak and bare, From which the city east and south and west Sinks gently in long waves; and throned there