The Doomed City

Lo ! Death hath rear'd himself a throne In a strange city, all alone, Far down within the dim west — And the good, and the bad, and the worst, and the best, Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines, and palaces, and towers Are — not like any thing of ours — O ! no — O! no — ours never loom To heaven with that ungodly gloom! Time-eaten towers that tremble not! Around, by lifting winds forgot, Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie.

A heaven that God doth not contemn With stars is like a diadem — We liken our ladies' eyes to them — But there ! that everlasting pall! It would be mockery to call Such dreariness a heaven at all. Yet tho' no holy rays come down On the long night-time of that town, Light from the lurid, deep sea Streams up the turrets silently — Up thrones — up long-forgotten bowers Of sculptur'd ivy and stone flowers — Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls — Up many a melancholy shrine Whose entablatures intertwine The mask the — the viol — and the vine.

There open temples — open graves Are on a level with the waves — But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye. Not the gaily-jewell'd dead Tempt the waters from their bed: For no ripples curl, alas! Along that wilderness of glass —

No swellings hint that winds may be Upon a far-off happier sea: So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from the high towers of the town Death looks gigantically down. But lo! a stir is in the air! The wave! there is a ripple there! As if the towers had thrown aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide — As if the turret-tops had given A vacuum in the filmy heaven: The waves have now a redder glow — The very hours are breathing low — And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell rising from a thousand thrones Shall do it reverence, And Death to some more happy clime Shall give his undivided time.

Осужденный город (По/Брюсов)