II.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms and caves and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the dews that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead,--
Their still waters, still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.

III.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily;
By the mountains-near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever;
By the gray woods-by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp;
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the ghouls;

By each spot the most unholy,
In each nook most melancholy,—

There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past,-

Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by,—
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth-and Heaven.

IV.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region;
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis—O, 'tis an Eldorado!

But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not, dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its king, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;

And thus the sad soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

V.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, namèd NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

I.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying 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

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

II.

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 sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine,
Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

III.

There open fanes, and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye,—
Not the gaily-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass;

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea;

No heaving hints that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

IV.

But, lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave-there is a movement there
As if the towers had thrust 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.