XVWherever men are gathered, all the airIs charged with human feeling, human thought;Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer,Are into its vibrations surely wrought;Unspoken passion, wordless meditation, 5Are breathed into it with our respirationIt is with our life fraught and overfraught.So that no man there breathes earth's simple breath,As if alone on mountains or wide seas;But nourishes warm life or hastens death 10With joys and sorrows, health and foul disease,Wisdom and folly, good and evil labours,Incessant of his multitudinous neighbors;He in his turn affecting all of these.That City's atmosphere is dark and dense, 15Although not many exiles wander there,With many a potent evil influence,Each adding poison to the poisoned air;Infections of unutterable sadness,Infections of incalculable madness, 20Infections of incurable despair.
XVIOur shadowy congregation rested still,As musing on that message we had heardAnd brooding on that "End it when you will;"Perchance awaiting yet some other word;When keen as lightning through a muffled sky 5Sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry:—The man speaks sooth, alas! the man speaks sooth:We have no personal life beyond the grave;There is no God; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth:Can I find here the comfort which I crave? 10In all eternity I had one chance,One few years' term of gracious human life:The splendours of the intellect's advance,The sweetness of the home with babes and wife;The social pleasures with their genial wit: 15The fascination of the worlds of art,The glories of the worlds of nature, litBy large imagination's glowing heart;The rapture of mere being, full of health;The careless childhood and the ardent youth, 20The strenuous manhood winning various wealth,The reverend age serene with life's long truth:All the sublime prerogatives of Man;The storied memories of the times of old,The patient tracking of the world's great plan 25Through sequences and changes myriadfold.This chance was never offered me before;For me this infinite Past is blank and dumb:This chance recurreth never, nevermore;Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come. 30And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth,A mockery, a delusion; and my breathOf noble human life upon this earthSo racks me that I sigh for senseless death.My wine of life is poison mixed with gall, 35My noonday passes in a nightmare dream,I worse than lose the years which are my all:What can console me for the loss supreme?Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair? 40Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss:Hush and be mute envisaging despair.—This vehement voice came from the northern aisleRapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close;And none gave answer for a certain while, 45For words must shrink from these most wordless woes;At last the pulpit speaker simply said,With humid eyes and thoughtful drooping head:—My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus;This life itself holds nothing good for us, 50But ends soon and nevermore can be;And we knew nothing of it ere our birth,And shall know nothing when consigned to earth:I ponder these thoughts and they comfort me.
XVIIHow the moon triumphs through the endless nights!How the stars throb and glitter as they wheelTheir thick processions of supernal lightsAround the blue vault obdurate as steel!And men regard with passionate awe and yearning 5The mighty marching and the golden burning,And think the heavens respond to what they feel.Boats gliding like dark shadows of a dreamAre glorified from vision as they passThe quivering moonbridge on the deep black stream; 10Cold windows kindle their dead glooms of glassTo restless crystals; cornice dome and columnEmerge from chaos in the splendour solemn;Like faery lakes gleam lawns of dewy grass.With such a living light these dead eyes shine, 15These eyes of sightless heaven, that as we gazeWe read a pity, tremulous, divine,Or cold majestic scorn in their pure rays:Fond man! they are not haughty, are not tender;There is no heart or mind in all their splendour, 20They thread mere puppets all their marvellous maze.If we could near them with the flight unflown,We should but find them worlds as sad as this,Or suns all self-consuming like our ownEnringed by planet worlds as much amiss: 25They wax and wane through fusion and confusion;The spheres eternal are a grand illusion,The empyrean is a void abyss.
XVIIII wandered in a suburb of the north,And reached a spot whence three close lanes led down,Beneath thick trees and hedgerows winding forthLike deep brook channels, deep and dark and lown:The air above was wan with misty light, 5The dull grey south showed one vague blur of white.I took the left-hand path and slowly trodIts earthen footpath, brushing as I wentThe humid leafage; and my feet were shodWith heavy languor, and my frame downbent, 10With infinite sleepless weariness outworn,So many nights I thus had paced forlorn.After a hundred steps I grew awareOf something crawling in the lane below;It seemed a wounded creature prostrate there 15That sobbed with pangs in making progress slow,The hind limbs stretched to push, the fore limbs thenTo drag; for it would die in its own den.But coming level with it I discernedThat it had been a man; for at my tread 20It stopped in its sore travail and half-turned,Leaning upon its right, and raised its head,And with the left hand twitched back as in ireLong grey unreverend locks befouled with mire.A haggard filthy face with bloodshot eyes, 25An infamy for manhood to behold.He gasped all trembling, What, you want my prize?You leave, to rob me, wine and lust and goldAnd all that men go mad upon, since youHave traced my sacred secret of the clue? 30You think that I am weak and must submitYet I but scratch you with this poisoned blade,And you are dead as if I clove with itThat false fierce greedy heart. Betrayed! betrayed!I fling this phial if you seek to pass, 35And you are forthwith shrivelled up like grass.And then with sudden change, Take thought! take thought!Have pity on me! it is mine alone.If you could find, it would avail you naught;Seek elsewhere on the pathway of your own: 40For who of mortal or immortal raceThe lifetrack of another can retrace?Did you but know my agony and toil!Two lanes diverge up yonder from this lane;My thin blood marks the long length of their soil; 45Such clue I left, who sought my clue in vain:My hands and knees are worn both flesh and bone;I cannot move but with continual moan.But I am in the very way at lastTo find the long-lost broken golden thread 50Which unites my present with my past,If you but go your own way. And I said,I will retire as soon as you have toldWhereunto leadeth this lost thread of gold.And so you know it not! he hissed with scorn; 55I feared you, imbecile! It leads me backFrom this accursed night without a morn,And through the deserts which have else no track,And through vast wastes of horror-haunted time,To Eden innocence in Eden's clime: 60And I become a nursling soft and pure,An infant cradled on its mother's knee,Without a past, love-cherished and secure;Which if it saw this loathsome present Me,Would plunge its face into the pillowing breast, 65And scream abhorrence hard to lull to rest.He turned to grope; and I retiring brushedThin shreds of gossamer from off my face,And mused, His life would grow, the germ uncrushed;He should to antenatal night retrace, 70And hide his elements in that large wombBeyond the reach of man-evolving Doom.And even thus, what weary way were planned,To seek oblivion through the far-off gateOf birth, when that of death is close at hand! 75For this is law, if law there be in Fate:What never has been, yet may have its when;The thing which has been, never is again.
XIXThe mighty river flowing dark and deep,With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tidesVague-sounding through the City's sleepless sleep,Is named the River of the Suicides;For night by night some lorn wretch overweary, 5And shuddering from the future yet more dreary,Within its cold secure oblivion hides.One plunges from a bridge's parapet,As if by some blind and sudden frenzy hurled;Another wades in slow with purpose set 10Until the waters are above him furled;Another in a boat with dreamlike motionGlides drifting down into the desert ocean,To starve or sink from out the desert world.They perish from their suffering surely thus, 15For none beholding them attempts to save,The while thinks how soon, solicitous,He may seek refuge in the self-same wave;Some hour when tired of ever-vain enduranceImpatience will forerun the sweet assurance 20Of perfect peace eventual in the grave.When this poor tragic-farce has palled us long,Why actors and spectators do we stay?—To fill our so-short roles out right or wrong;To see what shifts are yet in the dull play 25For our illusion; to refrain from grievingDear foolish friends by our untimely leaving:But those asleep at home, how blest are they!Yet it is but for one night after all:What matters one brief night of dreary pain? 30When after it the weary eyelids fallUpon the weary eyes and wasted brain;And all sad scenes and thoughts and feelings vanishIn that sweet sleep no power can ever banish,That one best sleep which never wakes again. 35
XXI sat me weary on a pillar's base,And leaned against the shaft; for broad moonlightO'erflowed the peacefulness of cloistered space,A shore of shadow slanting from the right:The great cathedral's western front stood there, 5A wave-worn rock in that calm sea of air.Before it, opposite my place of rest,Two figures faced each other, large, austere;A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,An angel standing in the moonlight clear; 10So mighty by magnificence of form,They were not dwarfed beneath that mass enorm.Upon the cross-hilt of the naked swordThe angel's hands, as prompt to smite, were held;His vigilant intense regard was poured 15Upon the creature placidly unquelled,Whose front was set at level gaze which tookNo heed of aught, a solemn trance-like look.And as I pondered these opposed shapesMy eyelids sank in stupor, that dull swoon 20Which drugs and with a leaden mantle drapesThe outworn to worse weariness. But soonA sharp and clashing noise the stillness broke,And from the evil lethargy I woke.The angel's wings had fallen, stone on stone, 25And lay there shattered; hence the sudden sound:A warrior leaning on his sword aloneNow watched the sphinx with that regard profound;The sphinx unchanged looked forthright, as awareOf nothing in the vast abyss of air. 30Again I sank in that repose unsweet,Again a clashing noise my slumber rent;The warrior's sword lay broken at his feet:An unarmed man with raised hands impotentNow stood before the sphinx, which ever kept 35Such mien as if open eyes it slept.My eyelids sank in spite of wonder grown;A louder crash upstartled me in dread:The man had fallen forward, stone on stone,And lay there shattered, with his trunkless head 40Between the monster's large quiescent paws,Beneath its grand front changeless as life's laws.The moon had circled westward full and bright,And made the temple-front a mystic dream,And bathed the whole enclosure with its light, 45The sworded angel's wrecks, the sphinx supreme:I pondered long that cold majestic faceWhose vision seemed of infinite void space.
XXIAnear the centre of that northern crestStands out a level upland bleak and bare,From which the city east and south and westSinks gently in long waves; and throned thereAn Image sits, stupendous, superhuman, 5The bronze colossus of a winged Woman,Upon a graded granite base foursquare.Low-seated she leans forward massively,With cheek on clenched left hand, the forearm's mightErect, its elbow on her rounded knee; 10Across a clasped book in her lap the rightUpholds a pair of compasses; she gazesWith full set eyes, but wandering in thick mazesOf sombre thought beholds no outward sight.Words cannot picture her; but all men know 15That solemn sketch the pure sad artist wroughtThree centuries and threescore years ago,With phantasies of his peculiar thought:The instruments of carpentry and scienceScattered about her feet, in strange alliance 20With the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught;Scales, hour-glass, bell, and magic-square above;The grave and solid infant perched beside,With open winglets that might bear a dove,Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed; 25Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,But all too impotent to lift the regalRobustness of her earth-born strength and pride;And with those wings, and that light wreath which seemsTo mock her grand head and the knotted frown 30Of forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gownVoluminous, indented, and yet rigidAs if a shell of burnished metal frigid,The feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down; 35The comet hanging o'er the waste dark seas,The massy rainbow curved in front of itBeyond the village with the masts and trees;The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit,Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions 40Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions,The "MELENCOLIA" that transcends all wit.Thus has the artist copied her, and thusSurrounded to expound her form sublime,Her fate heroic and calamitous; 45Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time,Unvanquished in defeat and desolation,Undaunted in the hopeless conflagrationOf the day setting on her baffled prime.Baffled and beaten back she works on still, 50Weary and sick of soul she works the more,Sustained by her indomitable will:The hands shall fashion and the brain shall pore,And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour,Till Death the friend-foe piercing with his sabre 55That mighty heart of hearts ends bitter war.But as if blacker night could dawn on night,With tenfold gloom on moonless night unstarred,A sense more tragic than defeat and blight,More desperate than strife with hope debarred, 60More fatal than the adamantine NeverEncompassing her passionate endeavour,Dawns glooming in her tenebrous regard:To sense that every struggle brings defeatBecause Fate holds no prize to crown success; 65That all the oracles are dumb or cheatBecause they have no secret to express;That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertainBecause there is no light beyond the curtain;That all is vanity and nothingness. 70Titanic from her high throne in the north,That City's sombre Patroness and Queen,In bronze sublimity she gazes forthOver her Capital of teen and threne,Over the river with its isles and bridges, 75The marsh and moorland, to the stern rock-bridges,Confronting them with a coeval mien.The moving moon and stars from east to westCircle before her in the sea of air;Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest. 80Her subjects often gaze up to her there:The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,The weak new terrors; all, renewed assuranceAnd confirmation of the old despair.