Prachtig, Nemesis..!:'( Once again by the old Master (I cannot resist
)
The City In The Sea-E.A. Poe
Lo! Death has reared himself a 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
(Timeeaten 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 nighttime 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 Babylonlike walls
Up shadowy longforgotten 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 the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye
Not the gailyjewelled 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 faroff happier sea
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo a stir is in the air!
The wave there is a movement there!
As if the 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.
