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.

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.

o 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.

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.

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,
All Hades, from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence, And Death to some more happy clime Shall give his undivided time.