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THE CITY IN THE SEA.

I.

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

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

II.

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 wreathèd 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.

III.

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 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 heaving hints that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene,

IV.

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.

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

I.

THOU wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

II.

Ah, dream, too bright to last!
Ah, starry hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast !

A voice from out the future cries, "On! on!"-but o'er the past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, Mute, motionless, aghast!

III.

For, alas, alas, with me

The light of life is o'er !

"No more-no more-no more-'

(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

IV.

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams;

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

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