the city in the sea

The city in 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.

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 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

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

Allan Edgar Poe