James Thomson
The City of Dreadful Night

Per me si va nella citta dolente.

—Dante

Poi di tanto adoprar, di tanti moti
D'ogni celeste, ogni terrena cosa,
Girando senza posa,
Per tornar sempre la donde son mosse;
Uso alcuno, alcun frutto
Indovinar non so.

Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve
Ogni creata cosa,
In te, morte, si posa
Nostra ignuda natura;
Lieta no, ma sicura
Dell' antico dolor . . .
Pero ch' esser beato
Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato.

—Leopardi

PROEM

  Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I write
    My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears."
  Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
    To blot the sunshine of exultant years?
  Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden?
  Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden,
    And wail life's discords into careless ears?

  Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles
    To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth
  Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles,
    False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth;
  Because it gives some sense of power and passion
  In helpless innocence to try to fashion
    Our woe in living words howe'er uncouth.

  Surely I write not for the hopeful young,
    Or those who deem their happiness of worth,
  Or such as pasture and grow fat among
    The shows of life and feel nor doubt nor dearth,
  Or pious spirits with a God above them
  To sanctify and glorify and love them,
    Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth.

  For none of these I write, and none of these
    Could read the writing if they deigned to try;
  So may they flourish in their due degrees,
    On our sweet earth and in their unplaced sky.
  If any cares for the weak words here written,
  It must be some one desolate, Fate-smitten,
    Whose faith and hopes are dead, and who would die.

  Yes, here and there some weary wanderer
    In that same city of tremendous night,
  Will understand the speech and feel a stir
    Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight;
  "I suffer mute and lonely, yet another
  Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother
    Travels the same wild paths though out of sight."

  O sad Fraternity, do I unfold
    Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore?
  Nay, be assured; no secret can be told
    To any who divined it not before:
  None uninitiate by many a presage
  Will comprehend the language of the message,
    Although proclaimed aloud for evermore.

I

  The City is of Night; perchance of Death
    But certainly of Night; for never there
  Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
    After the dewy dawning's cold grey air:
  The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity
  The sun has never visited that city,
    For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

  Dissolveth like a dream of night away;
    Though present in distempered gloom of thought
  And deadly weariness of heart all day.
    But when a dream night after night is brought
  Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many
  Recur each year for several years, can any
    Discern that dream from real life in aught?

  For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
    Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
  And some by day, some night and day: we learn,
    The while all change and many vanish quite,
  In their recurrence with recurrent changes
  A certain seeming order; where this ranges
    We count things real; such is memory's might.

  A river girds the city west and south,
    The main north channel of a broad lagoon,
  Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth;
    Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon
  For leagues, then moorland black, then stony ridges;
  Great piers and causeways, many noble bridges,
    Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn.

  Upon an easy slope it lies at large
    And scarcely overlaps the long curved crest
  Which swells out two leagues from the river marge.
    A trackless wilderness rolls north and west,
  Savannahs, savage woods, enormous mountains,
  Bleak uplands, black ravines with torrent fountains;
    And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest.

  The city is not ruinous, although
    Great ruins of an unremembered past,
  With others of a few short years ago
    More sad, are found within its precincts vast.
  The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement
  In house or palace front from roof to basement
    Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast.

  The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,
    Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
  Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.
    The silence which benumbs or strains the sense
  Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping:
  Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping,
    Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence!

  Yet as in some necropolis you find
    Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead,
  So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind
    Like tragic masks of stone.  With weary tread,
  Each wrapt in his own doom, they wander, wander,
  Or sit foredone and desolately ponder
    Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head.

  Mature men chiefly, few in age or youth,
    A woman rarely, now and then a child:
  A child!  If here the heart turns sick with ruth
    To see a little one from birth defiled,
  Or lame or blind, as preordained to languish
  Through youthless life, think how it bleeds with anguish
    To meet one erring in that homeless wild.

  They often murmur to themselves, they speak
    To one another seldom, for their woe
  Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak
    Itself abroad; and if at whiles it grow
  To frenzy which must rave, none heeds the clamour,
  Unless there waits some victim of like glamour,
    To rave in turn, who lends attentive show.

  The City is of Night, but not of Sleep;
    There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain;
  The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
    A night seems termless hell.  This dreadful strain
  Of thought and consciousness which never ceases,
  Or which some moments' stupor but increases,
    This, worse than woe, makes wretches there insane.

  They leave all hope behind who enter there:
    One certitude while sane they cannot leave,
  One anodyne for torture and despair;
    The certitude of Death, which no reprieve
  Can put off long; and which, divinely tender,
  But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render
    That draught whose slumber nothing can bereave¹

II

  Because he seemed to walk with an intent
    I followed him; who, shadowlike and frail,
  Unswervingly though slowly onward went,
    Regardless, wrapt in thought as in a veil:
  Thus step for step with lonely sounding feet
  We travelled many a long dim silent street.

  At length he paused: a black mass in the gloom,
    A tower that merged into the heavy sky;
  Around, the huddled stones of grave and tomb:
    Some old God's-acre now corruption's sty:
  He murmured to himself with dull despair,
  Here Faith died, poisoned by this charnel air.

  Then turning to the right went on once more
    And travelled weary roads without suspense;
  And reached at last a low wall's open door,
    Whose villa gleamed beyond the foliage dense:
  He gazed, and muttered with a hard despair,
  Here Love died, stabbed by its own worshipped pair.

  Then turning to the right resumed his march,
    And travelled street and lanes with wondrous strength,
  Until on stooping through a narrow arch
    We stood before a squalid house at length:
  He gazed, and whispered with a cold despair,
  Here Hope died, starved out in its utmost lair.

  When he had spoken thus, before he stirred,
    I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
  Of desolation I had seen and heard
    In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:
  Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed,
  Can Life still live?  By what doth it proceed?

  As whom his one intense thought overpowers,
    He answered coldly, Take a watch, erase
  The signs and figures of the circling hours,
    Detach the hands, remove the dial-face;
  The works proceed until run down; although
  Bereft of purpose, void of use, still go.

  Then turning to the right paced on again,
    And traversed squares and travelled streets whose glooms
  Seemed more and more familiar to my ken;
    And reached that sullen temple of the tombs;
  And paused to murmur with the old despair,
  Hear Faith died, poisoned by this charnel air.

  I ceased to follow, for the knot of doubt
    Was severed sharply with a cruel knife:
  He circled thus forever tracing out
    The series of the fraction left of Life;
  Perpetual recurrence in the scope
  Of but three terms, dead Faith, dead Love, dead Hope.²

III

  Although lamps burn along the silent streets,
    Even when moonlight silvers empty squares
  The dark holds countless lanes and close retreats;
    But when the night its sphereless mantle wears
  The open spaces yawn with gloom abysmal,
  The sombre mansions loom immense and dismal,
    The lanes are black as subterranean lairs.

  And soon the eye a strange new vision learns:
    The night remains for it as dark and dense,
  Yet clearly in this darkness it discerns
    As in the daylight with its natural sense;
  Perceives a shade in shadow not obscurely,
  Pursues a stir of black in blackness surely,
    Sees spectres also in the gloom intense.

  The ear, too, with the silence vast and deep
    Becomes familiar though unreconciled;
  Hears breathings as of hidden life asleep,
    And muffled throbs as of pent passions wild,
  Far murmurs, speech of pity or derision;
  but all more dubious than the things of vision,
    So that it knows not when it is beguiled.

  No time abates the first despair and awe,
    But wonder ceases soon; the weirdest thing
  Is felt least strange beneath the lawless law
    Where Death-in-Life is the eternal king;
  Crushed impotent beneath this reign of terror,
  Dazed with mysteries of woe and error,
    The soul is too outworn for wondering.

IV

  He stood alone within the spacious square
    Declaiming from the central grassy mound,
  With head uncovered and with streaming hair,
    As if large multitudes were gathered round:
  A stalwart shape, the gestures full of might,
  The glances burning with unnatural light:—

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: All was black,
  In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
  A brooding hush without a stir or note,
  The air so thick it clotted in my throat;
  And thus for hours; then some enormous things
  Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:
    But I strode on austere;
    No hope could have no fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire
  Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;
  The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath
  Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;
  Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold
  Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:
    But I strode on austere;
    No hope could have no fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,
  That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
  Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow
  Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
  A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell
  For Devil's roll-call and some fete of Hell:
    Yet I strode on austere;
    No hope could have no fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: Meteors ran
  And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;
  The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,
  The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame;
  The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged
  And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:
    Yet I strode on austere;
    No hope could have no fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: Air once more,
  And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;
  Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,
  The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;
  White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;
  The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:
    Yet I strode on austere;
    No hope could have no fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: On the left
  The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;
  There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,
  A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;
  Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,
  And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:
    Yet I strode on austere;
    No hope could have no fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: From the right
  A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;
  A woman with a red lamp in her hand,
  Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;
  O desolation moving with such grace!
  O anguish with such beauty in thy face!
    I fell as on my bier,
    Hope travailed with such fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: I was twain,
  Two selves distinct that cannot join again;
  One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
  And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
  And she came on, and never turned aside,
  Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
    And as she came more near
    My soul grew mad with fear.

  As I came through the desert thus it was,
  As I came through the desert: Hell is mild
  And piteous matched with that accursed wild;
  A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,

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1

Though the Garden of thy Life be wholly waste, the sweet flowers withered, the fruit-trees barren, over its wall hang ever the rich dark clusters of the Vine of Death, within easy reach of thy hand, which may pluck of them when it will.

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2

Life divided by that persistent three = LXX / 333 = .210.

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