The City in the Sea

Lo! death has reared himself throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim west
Where the good and the bad
And the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
Time-eaten towers that tremble not
Resemble nothing that is ours
Around, by lifting winds forgot
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free
Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls
Up fanes, up Babylon, like walls
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers.
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet and the vine
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with luminous waves
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea
No heavings hint winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo! a stir in the air
The wave, there is a movement there
As if towers had thrust aside
In slightly sinking the dull tide
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow
The hours are breathing faint and low
And when, amid no earthly moans
Down, down that town shall settle hence
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones
Shall do it reverence.