LO! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far off in a region unblest,

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 scultured ivy and stone flowers —

Up many and many a marvelous shrine

Whose wreathëd friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

 

Resignedly beneath the sky

Around the mournful waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air.

No murmuring ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass —

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon a far-off happier sea —

No heavings hint that winds have been

On oceans not so sad-serene.

 

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave — there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrown 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.