The City of Dreadful Night

XIII

 
  Of all things human which are strange and wild
    This is perchance the wildest and most strange,
  And showeth man most utterly beguiled,
    To those who haunt that sunless City's range;
  That he bemoans himself for aye, repeating
  How Time is deadly swift, how life is fleeting,
    How naught is constant on the earth but change.
 
 
  The hours are heavy on him and the days;
    The burden of the months he scarce can bear;
  And often in his secret soul he prays
    To sleep through barren periods unaware,
  Arousing at some longed-for date of pleasure;
  Which having passed and yielded him small treasure,
    He would outsleep another term of care.
 
 
  Yet in his marvellous fancy he must make
    Quick wings for Time, and see it fly from us;
  This Time which crawleth like a monstrous snake,
    Wounded and slow and very venomous;
  Which creeps blindwormlike round the earth and ocean,
  Distilling poison at each painful motion,
    And seems condemned to circle ever thus.
 
 
  And since he cannot spend and use aright
    The little time here given him in trust,
  But wasteth it in weary undelight
    Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and lust,
  He naturally claimeth to inherit
  The everlasting Future, that his merit
    May have full scope; as surely is most just.
 
 
  O length of the intolerable hours,
    O nights that are as aeons of slow pain,
  O Time, too ample for our vital powers,
    O Life, whose woeful vanities remain
  Immutable for all of all our legions
  Through all the centuries and in all the regions,
    Not of your speed and variance WE complain.
 
 
  WE do not ask a longer term of strife,
    Weakness and weariness and nameless woes;
  We do not claim renewed and endless life
    When this which is our torment here shall close,
  An everlasting conscious inanition!
  We yearn for speedy death in full fruition,
    Dateless oblivion and divine repose.
 

XIV

 
  Large glooms were gathered in the mighty fane,
    With tinted moongleams slanting here and there;
  And all was hush: no swelling organ-strain,
    No chant, no voice or murmuring of prayer;
  No priests came forth, no tinkling censers fumed,
  And the high altar space was unillumed.
 
 
  Around the pillars and against the walls
    Leaned men and shadows; others seemed to brood
  Bent or recumbent in secluded stalls.
    Perchance they were not a great multitude
  Save in that city of so lonely streets
  Where one may count up every face he meets.
 
 
  All patiently awaited the event
    Without a stir or sound, as if no less
  Self-occupied, doomstricken while attent.
    And then we heard a voice of solemn stress
  From the dark pulpit, and our gaze there met
  Two eyes which burned as never eyes burned yet:
 
 
  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.
 
 
  It was the dark delusion of a dream,
  That living Person conscious and supreme,
    Whom we must curse for cursing us with life;
  Whom we must curse because the life he gave
  Could not be buried in the quiet grave,
    Could not be killed by poison or the knife.
 
 
  This little life is all we must endure,
  The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
    We fall asleep and never wake again;
  Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
  Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
    In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.
 
 
  We finish thus; and all our wretched race
  Shall finish with its cycle, and give place
    To other beings with their own time-doom:
  Infinite aeons ere our kind began;
  Infinite aeons after the last man
    Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.
 
 
  We bow down to the universal laws,
  Which never had for man a special clause
    Of cruelty or kindness, love or hate:
  If toads and vultures are obscene to sight,
  If tigers burn with beauty and with might,
    Is it by favour or by wrath of Fate?
 
 
  All substance lives and struggles evermore
  Through countless shapes continually at war,
    By countless interactions interknit:
  If one is born a certain day on earth,
  All times and forces tended to that birth,
    Not all the world could change or hinder it.
 
 
  I find no hint throughout the Universe
  Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse;
    I find alone Necessity Supreme;
  With infinite Mystery, abysmal, dark,
  Unlighted ever by the faintest spark
    For us the flitting shadows of a dream.
 
 
  O Brothers of sad lives!  they are so brief;
  A few short years must bring us all relief:
    Can we not bear these years of laboring breath?
  But if you would not this poor life fulfil,
  Lo, you are free to end it when you will,
    Without the fear of waking after death.—
 
 
  The organ-like vibrations of his voice
    Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away;
  The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice
    Was sad and tender as a requiem lay:
  Our shadowy congregation rested still
  As brooding on that "End it when you will."
 

XV

 
  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 neighbors;
    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;
  Infections of unutterable sadness,
  Infections of incalculable madness,
    Infections of incurable despair.