The City In the Sea / Shadow

Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city Alone Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city Alone Their shrines and palaces are not like ours They do not tremble and rot Eaten with time Death has reared himself a throne Lifted by forgotten winds Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie A crown of stars In a strange city Alone A heaven God does not condemn But the everlasting shadow Makes mockery of it all No holy rays come down Lights from the lurid deep sea Stream up the turrets silently Up thrones, up arbors Of sculpted ivy and stone flowers Up domes, up spires Kingly halls all are melancholy shrines The columns, frieze and entablature Chokingly shockingly intertwined The mast the viol and the vine Twisted There amid no earthly moans Hell rises from a thousand thrones Does reverence to death And death does give his undivided time There are open temples And graves on a level with the waves Death looms and looks Huge Gigantic There is a ripple Now a wave Towers thrown aside Sinking in the dull tide The waves glowing redder The very hours losing their breath All the cunning stars Watching fitfully over night after night of Matchless ... sleep Matched only with the whole of dream ... The tell-tale beating of the heart The ... breath The desire, the pose One poses upon the precipice To fall to run to dive to tumble to fall down Down into the spiral down and then One sees one's own death One sees one committing murder or atrocious violent acts And then across the shadow Not of man or God But the shadow resting upon the brazen doorway There were seven of us there Who saw the shadow as it came out from among the draperies But we did not dare behold it We looked down into the depths of the mirror of ebony And the apparition spoke "I am a shadow And I dwell in the catacombs Which border The country of illusion Hard by the dim plains of wishing" And then did we start shuddering Starting from our seats Trembling For the tones in the voice of the shadow Were not the tones of any one man But of a multitude of beings And varying in their cadences From syllable to syllable Fell duskily upon our ears in the well Remembered and familiar accents Of a thousand departed friends