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The Doom of a City, Part I - The Voyage

by James Thomson - (Bysshe Vanolis)

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 the pain

Of baffled longings, and starved misery,

And such remorse as sears the breast,

And hopeless doubt which gnaws the brain

Till wildest action blind and vain

Would be more welcome than supine unrest,

Drove forth as one possest

To leave my kind and dare the desert sea;

To drift alone and far,

Dubious of any port or isle to gain,

Ignorant of chart and star,

Upon that infinite and mysterious main

Which wastes in foam against our shore;

Whose moans and murmurs evermore,

Insupportably sublime,

Haunting the crowded tumult of our Time,

Suspend its hurrying breath

Like whispers of sad ghosts and spirits free

From worlds beyond our life and death,

The unknown awful realm where broods Eternity.

I paced through desert streets, beneath the gleam

Of lamps that lit my trembling life alone;

Like lamps sepulchral which had slowly burned

Through sunless ages, deep and undiscerned,

Within a buried City's maze of stone;

Whose peopling corpses, while they ever dream

Of birth and death of complicated life

Whose days and months and years

Are wild with laughters, groans, and tears,

As with themselves and Doom

They wage, with loss or gain, incessant strife,

Indeed, lie motionless within their tomb,

Lie motionless and never laugh or weep,

All still, and buried deep

For ever in death's sleep,

While burn the quiet lamps amidst the breathless gloom.

III

My boat lay waiting there,

Upon the moonless river

Whose pulse had ceased to quiver

In that unnatural hush of brooding night.

I thought, Free breezes course the billowy deep!

And rowed on panting through the feverous air,

Leaving the great main waters on in my right

For that canal which creeps into the sea

Across the livid marshes wild and bare.

So slowly faded back from sight,

As cloth a dream insensibly

Fade backward on the ebbing tide of sleep,

That city which had home nor hope for me,

That stifling tomb from which I now was free.

Like some weak life whose sluggish moments creep

Diffused on worthless objects, yet whose tide

With dull reluctance hard to understand

Refrains its death-in-life from death's full sleep,

The river's shallow waters oozed out wide,

Inclosing dreary flats of barren sand;

So merged at last into the lethal waste

That bounds of sea and stream could not be traced.

Long languidly I rowed,

With sick and weary pain,

Between the deepest channel's bitter weeds

Whose rankness salt slime feeds;

And so out blindly through the dismal main,

Now shaken with a long hoarse-growling swell.

And soon the Tempest-as a King who had slept

The sleep of worn-out frenzy, while his slaves

Cowered still in stupor till he woke again

Refreshed for carnage-from his torpor leapt

Breathed swarthy pallor through the dense low sky,

And hurrying swift and fell

Outspeeded his own thunder-bearing glooms;

Then prone and instantaneous from on high

Plunged down in one tremendous blast,

Which crashed into white dust the heaving waves

And left the ocean level when it past....

There was a moment's respite; silence reigned;

Such shuddering silence as may once appal

The universe of tombs,

Ere the last trumpet's clangour rend them all:

And I sank down, one frail and helpless man

Alone with desolation on the sea,

To pray while any sense of prayer remained

Amidst the horrors overwhelming me.

How shall I tell that tempest's thunder-story?

The soldier plunged into the Battle-stress,

Struggling and gasping in the mighty flood,

Stunned with the roar of cannon, blind with smoke,

'Midst yells and tramplings drunk and mad with blood,

What knows he of the Battle's spheric glory?

Of heavenly laws that all its evil bless

Of sacred rights of justice which invoke

Its sternest pleading of the tranquil eye

Triumphant o'er its chaos of the Mind

Commanding all, serene and unsubdued,

Which having first with wisest care designed

Works to the end with vigilant fortitude;

And from that field so drenched with angry blood

Shall reap the golden harvest, VICTORY?

VII

There was a stupor stung with pain and fear,

Amidst the strangling surf flung on and on;

There was bewilderment above all dread,

Delirious calm and desperate joy austere

Of revelling through the tempest lorn and lone.

My boat and I with dizzy swiftness sped,

In strange salvation from the certain doom,

Along the urgent ridges over-reeling

And gathering up their ruins as they fled;

And down into the depths of scooped-out gloom

Whose crystal walls glowed black in the revealing

Of lightning-kindled foam; and up again,

Perched on the giddy balance of two waves

Which fiercely countering mingle with the shock,

And rush aloft confused, and tower and rock

Foaming with wild convulsion, till amain

The mass heaves down from struggling, self-destroyed,

And leaves us shuddering in a gulfy void.

Confused and intermingled, fire, sea, air,

Wrought out their ravage; for the thunders there

Were echoing in the dreadly stormless caves

And shook the deep foundations of the seas;

The air was like an ocean, drenched with spray

Whose meteor-flakes outflashed tumultuously

Against the sinking heaven's black incline,

When sudden lightnings seemed to burst their way

Up through the deep to flood and fire its brine,

Ingulfing for each moment all the Night,

The blackness and the howling rage, in light

More lurid and appalling, a World-pyre....

But heart and brain were overwrought; and soon,

All vision reeling from my powerless eyes,

I lay in quiet mercy-granted swoon

As senseless as the boat in which I lay:

And we two things through all the agonies

Of night, tornado, sea, and fire,

Were drifted passive on our fearful way.

VIII

I know not for what time I lay in trance,

Nor in what course the tempest hurled us on.

At length to scarce-believed deliverance

I woke; and saw a sweet slow silent dawn

Upgrowing from the far dim grey abyss,

So slow, it seemed like some celestial flower

Unfolding perfect petals to its prime,

And feeling in its secret soul of bliss

Each leaf a loveliness for many an hour,

With amaranthine queenship over time.

It grew: its purple splendours, flecked and starred

With golden fire, spread floating up the steep

Until they sole possessed the mighty sweep

Of crystal lucent aether: its regard,

The blessing of a light of peace and love,

Charmed with a gradual spell the sullen mood

Of the sea-giant, until all-subdued

No more his huge bulk livid shook and hove

The meteor-threatenings of his tawny mane,

No more growled lingering wrath and turbulent pain;

But calm and glad th' unmonstered monster lay

Beneath the royal sun's perfected sway.

And there was Land. Where seemed a bank of clouds

Piled in the South, now nobly, one by one,

The pinnacles of lofty mountain-peaks

Flamed keen as stars, enkindled by the sun;

Emerging as with life from out their shrouds

Of silvern haze far-cleft with roseate streaks:

And far beneath them, down along the shore,

A wave of low round hills gleamed pure and pale.

But soon-like any human life

The golden promise of whose dawn doth fail

Into the same drear noon of barren strife

Of which our hearts were weary-sick of yore,

The day grew chill and dark;

And through its sullen hours the wintry gale

Beat restlessly my bark,

Beside that coast-line drifting to and fro

Upon the ocean's vapour-shrouded flow.

I saw grey phantoms, fading as they fled,

Glide hurrying in loose rank

O'er livid backgrounds of the upper sky,

Whose vast and thunderous threat'ning overfrowned

Abysses strangely dread,

Cold, glassy gulfs, each like an evil eye

Of serpent-malice which is dead and blank

To every sight but woe and agony.

The fascination of their wan green glance

Was fixed upon the hills which (at the foot

Of that stern wall of mountain lifted proud

Above the firmament of level cloud)

Lay stretched out cold and mute,

In leaden bulk, beneath the long expanse

Of dark and desert sky, whose brooding gloom

Was blanched with cruel pallor here and there,

Pallor of wrath or dread, instinct with doom.

There stretched they far, a dark and silent host,

Like monsters stranded from their deep-sea lair

Benumbed with terror cowering;

Still unrecovered from the storm whose ire

Had drowned them in wild floods of pitiless fire,

Or prescient of some deadlier tempest lowering.

At intervals, opposing the sun's track,

Circling about the North

Shone strangely blazoned forth

Wild rainbow-fragments on the sweeping rack,

The gale's rent symbol on rent banners borne.

For ever and anon the sun gazed down

From dizzy summits of the cloud-crags black;

Or where the wind had torn

Vast jagged rifts athwart their mass

(Behind whose heavy frown

Faint smiles of soothing like a robe of grass

Had fallen from him on the frozen hills),

He gazed out powerless o'er the rain-grey sea:

No eye which sorrow fills

With constant bitter tears,

Drowning all life and lustre, joy and pride,

Can gaze more faint and wan and hopelessly

Into the homeless world and waste of years

Spread out between it and the grave's sweet sleeping;

Can let the dark lid sink upon its weeping

More often, fain to hide

The chilling desolation blurred with strife

Which, seen or unseen, maps its future life.

XII

Ere sunset came a storm of rain

Ploughing up the barren main

With fierce and vital energy,

While brief bright lightnings flashed incessantly.

And then the South stood up, one solid wall

Of battlemented cloud, in which the mountains

And hills were fused together out of sight:

The sinking sun from his intense fire-f'ountains

Poured out against its heaven-absorbing might

Seas of lurid purple light

And fulvous meteors, surging and devouring

The shattered crests, the crumbling slopes,

The massive walls, the riven copes,

In fortitude of glowing bronze far-towering.

XIII

From all the secret caverns of the air

Night's gloomy phantoms issuing, gathered dense

To blot and stifle out the pageant there;

The murmur of their motions breathing wide

Through that new silence thrilled upon the sense;

When gazing southward I became aware

Of some slow movement by the dim sea-side,

As of a wind arousing from its lair

To rend the settled vapours. I descried,

After an interval of rapt suspense,

By what faint gloaming yet was left of day,

Two startling lamps uplifted slowly glide

From out the thick and dun immensity,

Fronting a long dark line like some array

Of men that came in silent mystery,

Across the undulations of the shore

Long-winding coil on coil unbrokenly,

To celebrate weird rites and sorceries hoar,

Shrouded in gloom beside the moaning sea.

XIV

I knew, but would not know,

I knew too well, but knowledge was despair.

It came on vast and slow,

And dipt those baleful meteors in the brine;

Whence soon it lifted them with hideous cries

That flung strange horror through the shuddering air.

Haling its length in many a monstrous twine,

It bore on steadfastly those loathsome eyes,

Set in the midst of intertangled hair

Like sea-weed in whose jungle have their lair

All foul and half-lived things:

With such a gleam as haunts the rotting graves

They fixed upon me their malignant stare;

Shallow and slimy, fiendish, eyes of death.

It neared me soon with ponderous wallowings

Athwart the heaving and repugnant waves;

Then paused a moment, and with one harsh roar

Heaved up its whole obscene and ghastly bulk,

To rankle in my memory evermore

With hissing shrieks and bursts of' strangled breath,

Torn by some agonizing pang, it fell,

And lay upon the sea a vast dead hulk;

But raised yet once the huge and formless head

Whence blood-dark foam was showering; and those eyes

Glared blinking on me with the hate of Hell,

Before it turned reluctantly and fled.

Down, down, convicted by the holy skies,

Away, away, 0 God! it hurtled forth;

To cower in frozen caverns of the deep;

To haunt a nightmare in that ghastly sleep,

The death and desolation of the North.

A man forlorn has wandered, cursed from rest,

Through Time's dead wastes and savage howling seas,

Bearing a fateful Horror in his breast,

Formless and dim, but mighty to disease;

Devouring, poisoning, stifling his pure life.

And suddenly, when Hope can hope no more,

He feels its coils unwinding from his heart,

And rich vitality with glorious strife

Surging through veins all shrunk and numb before:

But also sees the Incubus depart,

Coil after coil reluctant dragged away

As were a serpent's from its strangled prey,

And thus in his first health is clearly shown

What still was hidden from his lunacy,

The full obscene and deadly ghastliness

Of that which held and ruled him to this day:

Abhorrence almost chills him into stone,

And that great blow which struck the prisoner free

Hath nearly slain him by its mighty stress.

Such was my agony of joy that hour,

When saved for ever from the monster's power.

XVI

The sky was spacious warm and bright,

The clouds were pure as morning snow;

In myriad points of living light

The sea lay laughing to and fro.

Above the hills a depth of sky,

Dim-pale with heat and light intense,

Was overhung by clouds piled high

In mountain-ranges huge and dense;

Whose rifts and ridges ran aloft

Far to their crests of dazzling snow,

Whence spread a vaporous lustre soft

Veiling the noontide's azure glow.

Through mists of purple glory seen

Those dim and panting hill-waves lay,

Absorbed into the heavens serene,

Dissolving in the perfect day.

But when the sun burned high and bare

In his own realm of solemn blue,

The clouds hung isolated there,

Dark purple grandeurs vast and few;

Like massive sculptures wrought at large

Upon that dome's immensity,

Like constant isles whose foamlit marge

Rose high from out that sapphire sea.

And all the day my boat sped on

With rapid gliding smooth as rest,

As if by mystic dreamings drawn

To some fair haven in the West;

Flew onward swift without a gale

As if it were a living thing,

And spread with joy its snow-white sail

As spreads a bird its snow-white wing;

Flashed on along the lucid deep

Dividing that most perfect sphere,

A vault above it glowing steep,

A vault beneath it no less clear;

Within whose burning sapphire-round

The clouds, the air, the land, the sea,

Lay thrilled with quivering glory, drowned

In calm as of Eternity.