James Thomson

“ 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 10 With 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, 15 Although 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, 20 Infections of incurable despair. ”

“ The City rests for man so weird and awful, That his intrusion there might seem unlawful, 20 And phantoms there may have their proper home. VIII While I still lingered on that river-walk, And watched the tide as black as our black doom, I heard another couple join in talk, And saw them to the left hand in the gloom Seated against an elm bole on the ground, 5 Their eyes intent upon the stream profound. "I never knew another man on earth But had some joy and solace in his life, Some chance of triumph in the dreadful strife: My doom has been unmitigated dearth." ”

“ It has no purpose, heart or mind or will. "While air of Space and Time's full river flow The mill must blindly whirl unresting so: 40 It may be wearing out, but who can know? "Man might know one thing were his sight less dim; That it whirls not to suit his petty whim, That it is quite indifferent to him. "Nay, does it treat him harshly as he saith? 45 It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath, Then grinds him back into eternal death." ”

“ One plunges from a bridge's parapet, As if by some blind and sudden frenzy hurled; Another wades in slow with purpose set 10 Until the waters are above him furled; Another in a boat with dreamlike motion Glides drifting down into the desert ocean, To starve or sink from out the desert world. They perish from their suffering surely thus, 15 For 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 endurance Impatience will forerun the sweet assurance 20 Of perfect peace eventual in the grave. ”

“ 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, 60 More fatal than the adamantine Never Encompassing her passionate endeavour, Dawns glooming in her tenebrous regard: To sense that every struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown success; 65 That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light beyond the curtain ”

“ O length of the intolerable hours, O nights that are as aeons of slow pain, 30 O Time, too ample for our vital powers, O Life, whose woeful vanities remain Immutable for all of all our legions Through all the centuries and in all the regions, Not of your speed and variance WE complain. 35 WE do not ask a longer term of strife, Weakness and weariness and nameless woes; We do not claim renewed and endless life When this which is our torment here shall close, An everlasting conscious inanition! 40 We yearn for speedy death in full fruition, Dateless oblivion and divine repose. ”

“ And some are great in rank and wealth and power, And some renowned for genius and for worth; And some are poor and mean, who brood and cower And shrink from notice, and accept all dearth 25 Of body, heart and soul, and leave to others All boons of life: yet these and those are brothers, The saddest and the weariest men on earth. XII Our isolated units could be brought To act together for some common end? For one by one, each silent with his thought, I marked a long loose line approach and wend Athwart the great cathedral's cloistered square, 5 And slowly vanish from the moonlit air. ”

“ The other sighed back, Yea; but if we grope With care through all this Limbo's dreary scope, We yet may pick up some minute lost hope; 60 And sharing it between us, entrance win, In spite of fiends so jealous for gross sin: Let us without delay our search begin. VII Some say that phantoms haunt those shadowy streets, And mingle freely there with sparse mankind; And tell of ancient woes and black defeats, And murmur mysteries in the grave enshrined: But others think them visions of illusion, 5 Or even men gone far in self-confusion; No man there being wholly sane in mind. ”

“ Perceives a shade in shadow not obscurely, Pursues a stir of black in blackness surely, Sees spectres also in the gloom intense. The ear, too, with the silence vast and deep 15 Becomes familiar though unreconciled; Hears breathings as of hidden life asleep, And muffled throbs as of pent passions wild, Far murmurs, speech of pity or derision; but all more dubious than the things of vision, 20 So that it knows not when it is beguiled. No time abates the first despair and awe, But wonder ceases soon ”

“ My wine of life is poison mixed with gall, 35 My 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? 40 Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss: Hush and be mute envisaging despair.— This vehement voice came from the northern aisle Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close ”

“ There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain; The pitiless hours like years and ages creep, A night seems termless hell. This dreadful strain Of thought and consciousness which never ceases, 75 Or which some moments' stupor but increases, This, worse than woe, makes wretches there insane. They leave all hope behind who enter there: One certitude while sane they cannot leave, One anodyne for torture and despair ”

“ 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? 10 In 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: 15 The fascination of the worlds of art, The glories of the worlds of nature, lit By large imagination's glowing heart; The rapture of mere being, full of health ”

“ Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden? 5 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, 10 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. ”

“ Though present in distempered gloom of thought And deadly weariness of heart all day. 10 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, 15 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 20 We count things real; such is memory's might. ”

“ Mature men chiefly, few in age or youth, A woman rarely, now and then a child: A child! If here the heart turns sick with ruth To see a little one from birth defiled, 60 Or lame or blind, as preordained to languish Through youthless life, think how it bleeds with anguish To meet one erring in that homeless wild. They often murmur to themselves, they speak To one another seldom, for their woe 65 Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak Itself abroad ”

“ Though he possess sweet babes and loving wife, A home of peace by loyal friendships cheered, And love them more than death or happy life, They shall avail not; he must dree his weird; 25 Renounce all blessings for that imprecation, Steal forth and haunt that builded desolation, Of woe and terrors and thick darkness reared. VI I sat forlornly by the river-side, And watched the bridge-lamps glow like golden stars Above the blackness of the swelling tide, Down which they struck rough gold in ruddier bars ”

“ If toads and vultures are obscene to sight, If tigers burn with beauty and with might, 65 Is it by favour or by wrath of Fate? All substance lives and struggles evermore Through countless shapes continually at war, By countless interactions interknit: If one is born a certain day on earth, 70 All times and forces tended to that birth, Not all the world could change or hinder it. I find no hint throughout the Universe Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse ”

“ Surely I write not for the hopeful young, 15 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, 20 Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth. ”

“ They have much wisdom yet they are not wise, They have much goodness yet they do not well, (The fools we know have their own paradise, 10 The wicked also have their proper Hell) ; They have much strength but still their doom is stronger, Much patience but their time endureth longer, Much valour but life mocks it with some spell. ”

“ XI What men are they who haunt these fatal glooms, And fill their living mouths with dust of death, And make their habitations in the tombs, And breathe eternal sighs with mortal breath, And pierce life's pleasant veil of various error 5 To reach that void of darkness and old terror Wherein expire the lamps of hope and faith? ”

“ A few short years must bring us all relief: 80 Can we not bear these years of laboring breath? But if you would not this poor life fulfil, Lo, you are free to end it when you will, Without the fear of waking after death.— The organ-like vibrations of his voice 85 Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away; The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice Was sad and tender as a requiem lay: Our shadowy congregation rested still As brooding on that "End it when you will." 90 XV Wherever men are gathered, all the air Is charged with human feeling, human thought ”

“ She murmured words of pity, love, and woe, Shee heeded not the level rushing flow: And mad with rage and fear, 95 I stood stonebound so near. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: When the tide Swept up to her there kneeling by my side, She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne 100 Away, and this vile me was left forlorn; I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart, Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart: They love; their doom is drear, Yet they nor hope nor fear ”

“ The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms, Amidst the soundless solitudes immense Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs. 45 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 you find 50 Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead, So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind Like tragic masks of stone. ”

“ Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh In earth, air, water, plants, and other men. We finish thus; and all our wretched race 55 Shall finish with its cycle, and give place To other beings with their own time-doom: Infinite aeons ere our kind began; Infinite aeons after the last man Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb. ”

“ But being there one feels a citizen; Escape seems hopeless to the heart forlorn: Can Death-in-Life be brought to life again? 10 And yet release does come; there comes a morn When he awakes from slumbering so sweetly That all the world is changed for him completely, And he is verily as if new-born. ”

“ XIII Of all things human which are strange and wild This is perchance the wildest and most strange, And showeth man most utterly beguiled, To those who haunt that sunless City's range; That he bemoans himself for aye, repeating 5 How Time is deadly swift, how life is fleeting, How naught is constant on the earth but change. ”

“ A woman very young and very fair; 25 Beloved by bounteous life and joy and youth, And loving these sweet lovers, so that care And age and death seemed not for her in sooth: Alike as stars, all beautiful and bright, these shapes lit up that mausolean night. ”

“ Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred Malignant and implacable! I vow "That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled, For all the temples to Thy glory built, 30 Would I assume the ignominious guilt Of having made such men in such a world." "As if a Being, God or Fiend, could reign, At once so wicked, foolish and insane, As to produce men when He might refrain! 35 "The world rolls round for ever like a mill; It grinds out death and life and good and ill ”

“ With such a living light these dead eyes shine, 15 These eyes of sightless heaven, that as we gaze We 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, 20 They thread mere puppets all their marvellous maze. ”

“ Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer, Are into its vibrations surely wrought; Unspoken passion, wordless meditation, 5 Are breathed into it with our respiration It is with our life fraught and overfraught. ”

“ Though the Garden of thy Life be wholly waste, the sweet flowers withered, the fruit-trees barren, over its wall hang ever the rich dark clusters of the Vine of Death, within easy reach of thy hand, which may pluck of them when it will. ”