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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342684" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Vision Of Doom</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I stood upon a hill. The setting sun<br>Was crimson with a curse and a portent,<br>And scarce his angry ray lit up the land<br>That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared<br>Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up<br>From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban,<br>Took shapes forbidden and without a name.<br>Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds<br>With cries discordant, startled all the air,<br>And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom-<br>The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled,<br>And shrieks of women, and men's curses. All<br>These visible shapes, and sounds no mortal ear<br>Had ever heard, some spiritual sense<br>Interpreted, though brokenly; for I<br>Was haunted by a consciousness of crime,<br>Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All<br>These things malign, by sight and sound revealed,<br>Were sin-begotten; that I knew-no more<br>And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams<br>The sleepy senses babble to the brain<br>Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice,<br>But whence it came I knew not, cried aloud<br>Some words to me in a forgotten tongue,<br>Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn,<br>Returned from the illimited inane.<br>Again, but in a language that I knew,<br>As in reply to something which in me<br>Had shaped itself a thought, but found no words,<br>It spake from the dread mystery about:<br>'Immortal shadow of a mortal soul<br>That perished with eternity, attend.<br>What thou beholdest is as void as thou:<br>The shadow of a poet's dream-himself<br>As thou, his soul as thine, long dead,<br>But not like thine outlasted by its shade.<br>His dreams alone survive eternity<br>As pictures in the unsubstantial void.<br>Excepting thee and me (and we because<br>The poet wove us in his thought) remains<br>Of nature and the universe no part<br>Or vestige but the poet's dreams. This dread,<br>Unspeakable land about thy feet, with all<br>Its desolation and its terrors-lo!<br>'T is but a phantom world. So long ago<br>That God and all the angels since have died<br>That poet lived-yourself long dead-his mind<br>Filled with the light of a prophetic fire,<br>And standing by the Western sea, above<br>The youngest, fairest city in the world,<br>Named in another tongue than his for one<br>Ensainted, saw its populous domain<br>Plague-smitten with a nameless shame. For there<br>Red-handed murder rioted; and there<br>The people gathered gold, nor cared to loose<br>The assassin's fingers from the victim's throat,<br>But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed:<br>'Am I my brother's keeper? Let the Law<br>Look to the matter.' But the Law did not.<br>And there, O pitiful! the babe was slain<br>Within its mother's breast and the same grave<br>Held babe and mother; and the people smiled,<br>Still gathering gold, and said: 'The Law, the Law,'<br>Then the great poet, touched upon the lips<br>With a live coal from Truth's high altar, raised<br>His arms to heaven and sang a song of doom<br>Sang of the time to be, when God should lean<br>Indignant from the Throne and lift his hand,<br>And that foul city be no more!-a tale,<br>A dream, a desolation and a curse!<br>No vestige of its glory should survive<br>In fact or memory: its people dead,<br>Its site forgotten, and its very name<br>Disputed.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Was the prophecy fulfilled?'<br>The sullen disc of the declining sun<br>Was crimson with a curse and a portent,<br>And scarce his angry ray lit up the land<br>That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared<br>Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up<br>From dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban,<br>Took shapes forbidden and without a name.<br>Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds<br>With cries discordant, startled all the air,<br>And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom.<br>But not to me came any voice again;<br>And, covering my face with thin, dead hands,<br>I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ambrose+Bierce">Ambrose Bierce</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342684" data-title="A Vision Of Doom de Ambrose Bierce" data-description="I stood upon a hill. The setting sun
Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up
From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ..."></div>
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