THE CITY OF DARKNESS

Wide-walled it stands in heathen lands

Beside a mystic sea,

With streets strange-trod of many a god,

And templed blasphemy.

Far in the night, a rose of light

It shines beside the sea;

But overhead an unknown dread

Impends eternally.

There is a sound above, around

Of music by the sea;

And weird and wide the torches glide

Of pagan revelry.

There is a noise as of a voice

That calls beneath the sea;

And all the deep grows pale with sleep

And vague expectancy.

Then slowly up — as from a cup

Seethes poison — lifts the sea;

Wild mass on mass, as in black glass,

The town glows fiery.

Red-lit it glowers like Hell's dark towers

Set in the iron sea;

And monster swarms with awful forms

Roll though it cloudily.

Still overhead the unknown dread,

Whose shadow dyes the sea,

At wrath-winged wait behind its gate

Till God shall set it free.

A taloned flash, an earthquake crash,

And, lo! upon the sea,

Black wall on wall, a giant pall,

Night settles hideously.

And where it burned, a rose inurned,

Red in the vasty sea,

The phantasm of the dread above

Sits in immensity.