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'The City In The Sea' poem originally by Edgar Allan Poe - published in 1845

FEATURED ON

Closed On Account Of Rabies - Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe [compilation] (1998)

THE CITY AND THE SEA

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
Their 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 the light from 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 wreathed 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

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 heavings hint that winds have been on seas less hideously serene

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
Breathing faint and low
Breathing faint and low 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