The City of Dreadful Night. Thomson James

      The City of Dreadful Night

      Per me si va nella citta dolente.

—Dante

      Poi di tanto adoprar, di tanti moti

      D'ogni celeste, ogni terrena cosa,

      Girando senza posa,

      Per tornar sempre la donde son mosse;

      Uso alcuno, alcun frutto

      Indovinar non so.

      Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve

      Ogni creata cosa,

      In te, morte, si posa

      Nostra ignuda natura;

      Lieta no, ma sicura

      Dell' antico dolor . . .

      Pero ch' esser beato

      Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato.

—Leopardi

      PROEM

        Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I write

          My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears."

        Yet why evoke the spectres of black night

          To blot the sunshine of exultant years?

        Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden?

        Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden,

          And wail life's discords into careless ears?

        Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles

          To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth

        Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles,

          False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth;

        Because it gives some sense of power and passion

        In helpless innocence to try to fashion

          Our woe in living words howe'er uncouth.

        Surely I write not for the hopeful young,

          Or those who deem their happiness of worth,

        Or such as pasture and grow fat among

          The shows of life and feel nor doubt nor dearth,

        Or pious spirits with a God above them

        To sanctify and glorify and love them,

          Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth.

        For none of these I write, and none of these

          Could read the writing if they deigned to try;

        So may they flourish in their due degrees,

          On our sweet earth and in their unplaced sky.

        If any cares for the weak words here written,

        It must be some one desolate, Fate-smitten,

          Whose faith and hopes are dead, and who would die.

        Yes, here and there some weary wanderer

          In that same city of tremendous night,

        Will understand the speech and feel a stir

          Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight;

        "I suffer mute and lonely, yet another

        Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother

          Travels the same wild paths though out of sight."

        O sad Fraternity, do I unfold

          Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore?

        Nay, be assured; no secret can be told

          To any who divined it not before:

        None uninitiate by many a presage

        Will comprehend the language of the message,

          Although proclaimed aloud for evermore.

      I

        The City is of Night; perchance of Death

          But certainly of Night; for never there

        Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath

          After the dewy dawning's cold grey air:

        The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity

        The sun has never visited that city,

          For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

        Dissolveth like a dream of night away;

          Though present in distempered gloom of thought

        And deadly weariness of heart all day.

          But when a dream night after night is brought

        Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many

        Recur each year for several years, can any

          Discern that dream from real life in aught?

        For life is but a dream whose shapes return,

          Some frequently, some seldom, some by night

        And some by day, some night and day: we learn,

          The while all change and many vanish quite,

        In their recurrence with recurrent changes

        A certain seeming order; where this ranges

          We count things real; such is memory's might.

        A river girds the city west and south,

          The main north channel of a broad lagoon,

        Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth;

          Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon

        For leagues, then moorland black, then stony ridges;

        Great piers and causeways, many noble bridges,

          Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn.

        Upon an easy slope it lies at large

          And scarcely overlaps the long curved crest

        Which swells out two leagues from the river marge.

          A trackless wilderness rolls north and west,

        Savannahs, savage woods, enormous mountains,

        Bleak uplands, black ravines with torrent fountains;

          And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest.

        The city is not ruinous, although

          Great ruins of an unremembered past,

        With others of a few short years ago

          More sad, are found within its precincts vast.

        The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement

        In house or palace front from roof to basement

          Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast.

        The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,

          Amidst the soundless solitudes immense

        Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

          The silence which benumbs or strains the sense

        Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping:

        Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping,

          Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence!

        Yet as in some necropolis