LO! Death hath rear'd himself a throne
In a strange city, all 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
- Are — not like any thing of ours —
- Oh no! — O no! — ours never loom
- To heaven with that ungodly gloom!
- 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 holy rays from heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town,
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
- Up thrones — up long-forgotten bowers
- Of scultur'd ivy and stone flowers —
- Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
- Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
- Up many a melancholy shrine
- Whose entablatures intertwine
The mask — the viol — and the vine.
There open temples — open graves
- Are on a level with the waves —
- But not the riches there that lie
- In each idol's diamond eye,
- Not the gaily-jewell'd dead
Tempt the waters from their bed:
For no ripples curl, alas!
- Along that wilderness of glass —
- No swellings hint that winds may be
Upon a far-off happier sea:
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from the high towers of the town
Death looks gigantically down.
But lo! a stir is in the air!
- The wave — there is a ripple there!
- As if the towers had thrown aside,
- In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
- As if the turret-tops had given
A vacuum in the filmy heaven.
- The waves have now a redder glow —
- The very hours are breathing low —
- And when, amid no earthly moans,
- Down, down, that town shall settle hence,
Down, down, that town shall settle hence,
All Hades, from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence,
And Death to some more happy clime