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THE CITY IN THE SEA.

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.

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.

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 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.

TO ZANTE.

FAIR isle that from the fairest of all flowers
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take,
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!
How many visions of a maiden that is

No more—no more upon thy verdant slopes!
No more! alas, that magical sad sound

Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no more

Thy memory no more! Accursed ground

Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore, O hyacinthine isle, O purple Zante !

Isola d'oro, fiore di levante!

DREAMLAND.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon named Night
On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space-out of Time.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead-
Their still waters, still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains-near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,-by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,-
By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past,
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by,

White-robed forms of friends long given
In agony to the Earth-and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis-oh 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringèd lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon named Night
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

ISRAFEL.1

IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute;
None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel;

And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamoured moon

Blushes with love,

1 And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who

has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.-KORAN.

POE.

While, to listen, the red levin-
With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven-

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and singsThe trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod;

Where deep thoughts are a duty— Where Love's a grown-up God

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit—
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervour of thy lute—
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.

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