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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416394" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Doom Of A City</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I<br> FROM out the house I crept,<br>The house which long had caged my homeless life:<br>The mighty City in vast silence slept,<br>Dreaming away its tumult, toil, and strife:<br>But sleep and sleep's rich dreams were not for me,<br>For me, accurst, whom terror and the pain<br>Of baffled longings, and starved misery,<br>And such remorse as sears the breast,<br>And hopeless doubt which gnaws the brain<br>Till wildest action blind and vain<br>Would be more welcome than supine unrest,<br> Drove forth as one possest<br>To leave my kind and dare the desert sea;<br> To drift alone and far,<br>Dubious of any port or isle to gain,<br> Ignorant of chart and star,<br>Upon that infinite and mysterious main<br>Which wastes in foam against our shore;<br>Whose moans and murmurs evermore,<br> Insupportably sublime,<br>Haunting the crowded tumult of our Time,<br> Suspend its hurrying breath -<br>Like whispers of sad ghosts and spirits free<br> From worlds beyond our life and death,<br>The unknown awful realm where broods Eternity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I paced through desert streets, beneath the gleam<br>Of lamps that lit my trembling life alone;<br>Like lamps sepulchral which had slowly burned<br>Through sunless ages, deep and undiscerned,<br>Within a buried City's maze of stone;<br>Whose peopling corpses, while they ever dream<br>Of birth and death - of complicated life<br> Whose days and months and years<br>Are wild with laughters, groans, and tears,<br> As with themselves and Doom<br>They wage, with loss or gain, incessant strife,<br>Indeed, lie motionless within their tomb,<br>Lie motionless and never laugh or weep,<br> All still, and buried deep<br> For ever in death's sleep,<br>While burn the quiet lamps amidst the breathless gloom.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> My boat lay waiting there,<br> Upon the moonless river<br> Whose pulse had ceased to quiver<br>In that unnatural hush of brooding night.<br>I thought, Free breezes course the billowy deep!<br>And rowed on panting through the feverous air,<br>Leaving the great main waters on in my right<br>For that canal which creeps into the sea<br>Across the livid marshes wild and bare.<br>  So slowly faded back from sight,<br>  As cloth a dream insensibly<br>Fade backward on the ebbing tide of sleep,<br>That city which had home nor hope for me,<br>That stifling tomb from which I now was free.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like some weak life whose sluggish moments creep<br>Diffused on worthless objects, yet whose tide<br>With dull reluctance hard to understand<br>Refrains its death-in-life from death's full sleep,<br>The river's shallow waters oozed out wide,<br>Inclosing dreary flats of barren sand;<br>So merged at last into the lethal waste<br>That bounds of sea and stream could not be traced.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>V</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Long languidly I rowed,<br> With sick and weary pain,<br>Between the deepest channel's bitter weeds<br> Whose rankness salt slime feeds;<br>And so out blindly through the dismal main,<br>Now shaken with a long hoarse-growling swell.<br>And soon the Tempest-as a King who had slept<br>The sleep of worn-out frenzy, while his slaves<br>Cowered still in stupor till he woke again<br>Refreshed for carnage-from his torpor leapt<br>Breathed swarthy pallor through the dense low sky,<br> And hurrying swift and fell<br>Outspeeded his own thunder-bearing glooms;<br>Then prone and instantaneous from on high<br> Plunged down in one tremendous blast,<br>Which crashed into white dust the heaving waves<br>And left the ocean level when it past....<br>There was a moment's respite; silence reigned;<br>Such shuddering silence as may once appal<br> The universe of tombs,<br>Ere the last trumpet's clangour rend them all:<br>And I sank down, one frail and helpless man<br>Alone with desolation on the sea,<br>To pray while any sense of prayer remained<br>Amidst the horrors overwhelming me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How shall I tell that tempest's thunder-story?<br>The soldier plunged into the Battle-stress,<br>Struggling and gasping in the mighty flood,<br>Stunned with the roar of cannon, blind with smoke,<br>'Midst yells and tramplings drunk and mad with blood,<br>What knows he of the Battle's spheric glory?<br>Of heavenly laws that all its evil bless -<br>Of sacred rights of justice which invoke<br>Its sternest pleading - of the tranquil eye<br>Triumphant o'er its chaos - of the Mind<br>Commanding all, serene and unsubdued,<br>Which having first with wisest care designed<br>Works to the end with vigilant fortitude;<br>And from that field so drenched with angry blood<br>Shall reap the golden harvest, VICTORY?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was a stupor stung with pain and fear,<br>Amidst the strangling surf flung on and on;<br>There was bewilderment above all dread,<br>Delirious calm and desperate joy austere<br>Of revelling through the tempest lorn and lone.<br>My boat and I with dizzy swiftness sped,<br>In strange salvation from the certain doom,<br>Along the urgent ridges over-reeling<br>And gathering up their ruins as they fled;<br>And down into the depths of scooped-out gloom<br>Whose crystal walls glowed black in the revealing<br>Of lightning-kindled foam; and up again,<br>Perched on the giddy balance of two waves<br>Which fiercely countering mingle with the shock,<br>And rush aloft confused, and tower and rock<br>Foaming with wild convulsion, till amain<br>The mass heaves down from struggling, self-destroyed,<br>And leaves us shuddering in a gulfy void.<br>Confused and intermingled, fire, sea, air,<br>Wrought out their ravage; for the thunders there<br>Were echoing in the dreadly stormless caves<br>And shook the deep foundations of the seas;<br>The air was like an ocean, drenched with spray<br>Whose meteor-flakes outflashed tumultuously<br>Against the sinking heaven's black incline,<br>When sudden lightnings seemed to burst their way<br>Up through the deep to flood and fire its brine,<br>Ingulfing for each moment all the Night,<br>The blackness and the howling rage, in light<br>More lurid and appalling, a World-pyre....<br>But heart and brain were overwrought; and soon,<br>All vision reeling from my powerless eyes,<br>I lay in quiet mercy-granted swoon<br>As senseless as the boat in which I lay:<br>And we two things through all the agonies<br> Of night, tornado, sea, and fire,<br>Were drifted passive on our fearful way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I know not for what time I lay in trance,<br>Nor in what course the tempest hurled us on.<br>At length to scarce-believed deliverance<br>I woke; and saw a sweet slow silent dawn<br>Upgrowing from the far dim grey abyss,-<br>So slow, it seemed like some celestial flower<br>Unfolding perfect petals to its prime,<br>And feeling in its secret soul of bliss<br>Each leaf a loveliness for many an hour,<br>With amaranthine queenship over time.<br>It grew: its purple splendours, flecked and starred<br>With golden fire, spread floating up the steep<br>Until they sole possessed the mighty sweep<br>Of crystal lucent aether: its regard,<br>The blessing of a light of peace and love,<br>Charmed with a gradual spell the sullen mood<br>Of the sea-giant, until all-subdued<br>No more his huge bulk livid shook and hove<br>The meteor-threatenings of his tawny mane,<br>No more growled lingering wrath and turbulent pain;<br>But calm and glad th' unmonstered monster lay<br>Beneath the royal sun's perfected sway.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there was Land. Where seemed a bank of clouds<br>Piled in the South, now nobly, one by one,<br>The pinnacles of lofty mountain-peaks<br>Flamed keen as stars, enkindled by the sun;<br>Emerging as with life from out their shrouds<br>Of silvern haze far-cleft with roseate streaks:<br>And far beneath them, down along the shore,<br>A wave of low round hills gleamed pure and pale.<br> But soon-like any human life<br>The golden promise of whose dawn doth fail<br>Into the same drear noon of barren strife<br>Of which our hearts were weary-sick of yore-<br> The day grew chill and dark;<br>And through its sullen hours the wintry gale<br> Beat restlessly my bark,<br>Beside that coast-line drifting to and fro<br>Upon the ocean's vapour-shrouded flow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>X</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I saw grey phantoms, fading as they fled,<br> Glide hurrying in loose rank<br>O'er livid backgrounds of the upper sky,<br>Whose vast and thunderous threat'ning overfrowned<br>  Abysses strangely dread-<br>Cold, glassy gulfs, each like an evil eye<br>Of serpent-malice which is dead and blank<br>To every sight but woe and agony.<br>The fascination of their wan green glance<br>Was fixed upon the hills which (at the foot<br>Of that stern wall of mountain lifted proud<br>Above the firmament of level cloud)<br> Lay stretched out cold and mute,<br>In leaden bulk, beneath the long expanse<br>Of dark and desert sky, whose brooding gloom<br>Was blanched with cruel pallor here and there-<br>Pallor of wrath or dread, instinct with doom.<br>There stretched they far, a dark and silent host,<br>Like monsters stranded from their deep-sea lair<br> Benumbed with terror cowering;<br>Still unrecovered from the storm whose ire<br>Had drowned them in wild floods of pitiless fire,<br>Or prescient of some deadlier tempest lowering.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At intervals, opposing the sun's track,<br> Circling about the North<br> Shone strangely blazoned forth<br>Wild rainbow-fragments on the sweeping rack,<br>The gale's rent symbol on rent banners borne.<br>For ever and anon the sun gazed down<br>From dizzy summits of the cloud-crags black;<br> Or where the wind had torn<br>Vast jagged rifts athwart their mass<br> (Behind whose heavy frown<br>Faint smiles of soothing like a robe of grass<br>Had fallen from him on the frozen hills),<br>He gazed out powerless o'er the rain-grey sea:<br> No eye which sorrow fills<br> With constant bitter tears,<br>Drowning all life and lustre, joy and pride,<br>Can gaze more faint and wan and hopelessly<br>Into the homeless world and waste of years<br>Spread out between it and the grave's sweet sleeping;<br>Can let the dark lid sink upon its weeping<br> More often, fain to hide<br>The chilling desolation blurred with strife<br>Which, seen or unseen, maps its future life.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XII</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Ere sunset came a storm of rain<br> Ploughing up the barren main<br> With fierce and vital energy,<br>While brief bright lightnings flashed incessantly.<br>And then the South stood up, one solid wall<br>Of battlemented cloud, in which the mountains<br>And hills were fused together out of sight:<br>The sinking sun from his intense fire-f'ountains<br>Poured out against its heaven-absorbing might<br> Seas of lurid purple light<br>And fulvous meteors, surging and devouring<br> The shattered crests, the crumbling slopes,<br> The massive walls, the riven copes,<br>In fortitude of glowing bronze far-towering.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From all the secret caverns of the air<br>Night's gloomy phantoms issuing, gathered dense<br>To blot and stifle out the pageant there;<br>The murmur of their motions breathing wide<br>Through that new silence thrilled upon the sense;<br>When gazing southward I became aware<br>Of some slow movement by the dim sea-side,<br>As of a wind arousing from its lair<br>To rend the settled vapours. I descried,<br>After an interval of rapt suspense,<br>By what faint gloaming yet was left of day,<br>Two startling lamps uplifted slowly glide<br>From out the thick and dun immensity,<br>Fronting a long dark line like some array<br>Of men that came in silent mystery,<br>Across the undulations of the shore<br>Long-winding coil on coil unbrokenly,<br>To celebrate weird rites and sorceries hoar,<br>Shrouded in gloom beside the moaning sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> I knew, but would not know,<br>I knew too well, but knowledge was despair.<br> It came on vast and slow,<br>And dipt those baleful meteors in the brine;<br>Whence soon it lifted them with hideous cries<br>That flung strange horror through the shuddering air.<br>Haling its length in many a monstrous twine,<br>It bore on steadfastly those loathsome eyes,<br>Set in the midst of intertangled hair<br>Like sea-weed in whose jungle have their lair<br> All foul and half-lived things:<br>With such a gleam as haunts the rotting graves<br>They fixed upon me their malignant stare;<br>Shallow and slimy, fiendish, eyes of death.<br>It neared me soon with ponderous wallowings<br>Athwart the heaving and repugnant waves;<br>Then paused a moment, and with one harsh roar<br>Heaved up its whole obscene and ghastly bulk,<br>To rankle in my memory evermore<br>With hissing shrieks and bursts of' strangled breath,<br>Torn by some agonizing pang, it fell,<br>And lay upon the sea a vast dead hulk;<br>But raised yet once the huge and formless head<br>Whence blood-dark foam was showering; and those eyes<br>Glared blinking on me with the hate of Hell,<br>Before it turned reluctantly and fled.<br>Down, down, convicted by the holy skies,<br>Away, away, 0 God! it hurtled forth;<br>To cower in frozen caverns of the deep;<br>To haunt - a nightmare in that ghastly sleep-<br>The death and desolation of the North.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A man forlorn has wandered, cursed from rest,<br>Through Time's dead wastes and savage howling seas,<br>Bearing a fateful Horror in his breast,<br>Formless and dim, but mighty to disease;<br>Devouring, poisoning, stifling his pure life.<br>And suddenly, when Hope can hope no more,<br>He feels its coils unwinding from his heart,<br>And rich vitality with glorious strife<br>Surging through veins all shrunk and numb before:<br>But also sees the Incubus depart,<br>Coil after coil reluctant dragged away<br>As were a serpent's from its strangled prey,<br>And thus in his first health is clearly shown<br>What still was hidden from his lunacy,<br>The full obscene and deadly ghastliness<br>Of that which held and ruled him to this day:<br>Abhorrence almost chills him into stone,<br>And that great blow which struck the prisoner free<br>Hath nearly slain him by its mighty stress.<br>Such was my agony of joy that hour,<br>When saved for ever from the monster's power.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>XVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The sky was spacious warm and bright,<br>The clouds were pure as morning snow;<br>In myriad points of living light<br>The sea lay laughing to and fro.<br>Above the hills a depth of sky,<br>Dim-pale with heat and light intense,<br>Was overhung by clouds piled high<br>In mountain-ranges huge and dense;<br>Whose rifts and ridges ran aloft<br>Far to their crests of dazzling snow,<br>Whence spread a vaporous lustre soft<br>Veiling the noontide's azure glow.<br>Through mists of purple glory seen<br>Those dim and panting hill-waves lay,<br>Absorbed into the heavens serene,<br>Dissolving in the perfect day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when the sun burned high and bare<br>In his own realm of solemn blue,<br>The clouds hung isolated there,<br>Dark purple grandeurs vast and few;<br>Like massive sculptures wrought at large<br>Upon that dome's immensity,<br>Like constant isles whose foamlit marge<br>Rose high from out that sapphire sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all the day my boat sped on<br>With rapid gliding smooth as rest,<br>As if by mystic dreamings drawn<br>To some fair haven in the West;<br>Flew onward swift without a gale<br>As if it were a living thing,<br>And spread with joy its snow-white sail<br>As spreads a bird its snow-white wing;<br>Flashed on along the lucid deep<br>Dividing that most perfect sphere,<br>A vault above it glowing steep,<br>A vault beneath it no less clear;<br>Within whose burning sapphire-round<br>The clouds, the air, the land, the sea,<br>Lay thrilled with quivering glory, drowned<br>In calm as of Eternity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Thomson">James Thomson</a><div class=q>
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 FROM out the house I crept,
The house which long had caged my homeless life:
The mighty City in vast silence slept,
Dreaming away its tumult, toil, and strife:
But sleep and sleep's rich dreams were not for me,
For me, accurst, whom terror and ..."></div>
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