* * * * *

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 and 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 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 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.

1835?

* * * * *

THE SLEEPER

  At midnight, in the month of June,
  I stand beneath the mystic moon. 
  An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
  Exhales from out her golden rim,
  And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
  Upon the quiet mountain top,
  Steals drowsily and musically
  Into the universal valley. 
  The rosemary nods upon the grave;
  The lily lolls upon the wave;
  Wrapping the fog about its breast,
  The ruin moulders into rest;
  Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
  A conscious slumber seems to take,
  And would not, for the world, awake. 
  All Beauty sleeps!—­and lo! where lies
  (Her casement open to the skies)
  Irene, with her Destinies!