The City Of Darkness
By Madison Julius Cawein
Wide-walled it stands in heathen lands
Beside a mystic sea,
With streets strange-trod of many a god,
And templed blasphemy.
Far in the night, a rose of light
It shines beside the sea;
But overhead an unknown dread
Impends eternally.
There is a sound above, around
Of music by the sea;
And weird and wide the torches glide
Of pagan revelry.
There is a noise as of a voice
That calls beneath the sea;
And all the deep grows pale with sleep
And vague expectancy.
Then slowly up - as from a cup
Seethes poison - lifts the sea;
Wild mass on mass, as in black glass,
The town glows fiery.
Red-lit it glowers like Hell's dark towers
Set in the iron sea;
And monster swarms with awful forms
Roll though it cloudily.
Still overhead the unknown dread,
Whose shadow dyes the sea,
At wrath-winged wait behind its gate
Till God shall set it free.
A taloned flash, an earthquake crash,
And, lo! upon the sea,
Black wall on wall, a giant pall,
Night settles hideously.
And where it burned, a rose inurned,
Red in the vasty sea,
The phantasm of the dread above
Sits in immensity.