The City Of Dreadful Night Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A A ABBBAB CBBDDDBB B E BBBBFFB BGBGFFG HIHIEEI BDBDFFD DBDBDDB BDBDJKD D LDLDBBD ABABBBB FBFBBBB MFMFBBF NBNBBBB BBBBBBB BBBBBBB BBBBDDB GBGBOOB BBBBBBB PFPFBBF BCBCBBC D BQBQBB EBEBBB BBBBBB RSRSBB BBBBBB BBBBBB FBFBP| Per me si va nella citta dolente | A |
| - | |
| Dante | A |
| - | |
| Poi di tanto adoprar di tanti moti | A |
| D'ogni celeste ogni terrena cosa | B |
| Girando senza posa | B |
| Per tornar sempre la donde son mosse | B |
| Uso alcuno alcun frutto | A |
| Indovinar non so | B |
| - | |
| Sola nel mondo eterna a cui si volve | C |
| Ogni creata cosa | B |
| In te morte si posa | B |
| Nostra ignuda natura | D |
| Lieta no ma sicura | D |
| Dell' antico dolor | D |
| Pero ch' esser beato | B |
| Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato | B |
| - | |
| Leopardi | B |
| - | |
| PROEM | E |
| - | |
| Lo thus as prostrate In the dust I write | B |
| My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears | B |
| Yet why evoke the spectres of black night | B |
| To blot the sunshine of exultant years | B |
| Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden | F |
| Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden | F |
| And wail life's discords into careless ears | B |
| - | |
| Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles | B |
| To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth | G |
| Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles | B |
| False dreams false hopes false masks and modes of youth | G |
| Because it gives some sense of power and passion | F |
| In helpless innocence to try to fashion | F |
| Our woe in living words howe'er uncouth | G |
| - | |
| Surely I write not for the hopeful young | H |
| Or those who deem their happiness of worth | I |
| Or such as pasture and grow fat among | H |
| The shows of life and feel nor doubt nor dearth | I |
| Or pious spirits with a God above them | E |
| To sanctify and glorify and love them | E |
| Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth | I |
| - | |
| For none of these I write and none of these | B |
| Could read the writing if they deigned to try | D |
| So may they flourish in their due degrees | B |
| On our sweet earth and in their unplaced sky | D |
| If any cares for the weak words here written | F |
| It must be some one desolate Fate smitten | F |
| Whose faith and hopes are dead and who would die | D |
| - | |
| Yes here and there some weary wanderer | D |
| In that same city of tremendous night | B |
| Will understand the speech and feel a stir | D |
| Of fellowship in all disastrous fight | B |
| I suffer mute and lonely yet another | D |
| Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother | D |
| Travels the same wild paths though out of sight | B |
| - | |
| O sad Fraternity do I unfold | B |
| Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore | D |
| Nay be assured no secret can be told | B |
| To any who divined it not before | D |
| None uninitiate by many a presage | J |
| Will comprehend the language of the message | K |
| Although proclaimed aloud for evermore | D |
| - | |
| - | |
| - | |
| I | D |
| - | |
| The City is of Night perchance of Death | L |
| But certainly of Night for never there | D |
| Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath | L |
| After the dewy dawning's cold grey air | D |
| The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity | B |
| The sun has never visited that city | B |
| For it dissolveth in the daylight fair | D |
| - | |
| Dissolveth like a dream of night away | A |
| Though present in distempered gloom of thought | B |
| And deadly weariness of heart all day | A |
| But when a dream night after night is brought | B |
| Throughout a week and such weeks few or many | B |
| Recur each year for several years can any | B |
| Discern that dream from real life in aught | B |
| - | |
| For life is but a dream whose shapes return | F |
| Some frequently some seldom some by night | B |
| And some by day some night and day we learn | F |
| The while all change and many vanish quite | B |
| In their recurrence with recurrent changes | B |
| A certain seeming order where this ranges | B |
| We count things real such is memory's might | B |
| - | |
| A river girds the city west and south | M |
| The main north channel of a broad lagoon | F |
| Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth | M |
| Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon | F |
| For leagues then moorland black then stony ridges | B |
| Great piers and causeways many noble bridges | B |
| Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn | F |
| - | |
| Upon an easy slope it lies at large | N |
| And scarcely overlaps the long curved crest | B |
| Which swells out two leagues from the river marge | N |
| A trackless wilderness rolls north and west | B |
| Savannahs savage woods enormous mountains | B |
| Bleak uplands black ravines with torrent fountains | B |
| And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest | B |
| - | |
| The city is not ruinous although | B |
| Great ruins of an unremembered past | B |
| With others of a few short years ago | B |
| More sad are found within its precincts vast | B |
| The street lamps always burn but scarce a casement | B |
| In house or palace front from roof to basement | B |
| Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast | B |
| - | |
| The street lamps burn amid the baleful glooms | B |
| Amidst the soundless solitudes immense | B |
| Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs | B |
| The silence which benumbs or strains the sense | B |
| Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping | B |
| Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping | B |
| Or dead or fled from nameless pestilence | B |
| - | |
| Yet as in some necropolis you find | B |
| Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead | B |
| So there worn faces that look deaf and blind | B |
| Like tragic masks of stone With weary tread | B |
| Each wrapt in his own doom they wander wander | D |
| Or sit foredone and desolately ponder | D |
| Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head | B |
| - | |
| Mature men chiefly few in age or youth | G |
| A woman rarely now and then a child | B |
| A child If here the heart turns sick with ruth | G |
| To see a little one from birth defiled | B |
| Or lame or blind as preordained to languish | O |
| Through youthless life think how it bleeds with anguish | O |
| To meet one erring in that homeless wild | B |
| - | |
| They often murmur to themselves they speak | B |
| To one another seldom for their woe | B |
| Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak | B |
| Itself abroad and if at whiles it grow | B |
| To frenzy which must rave none heeds the clamour | B |
| Unless there waits some victim of like glamour | B |
| To rave in turn who lends attentive show | B |
| - | |
| The City is of Night but not of Sleep | P |
| There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain | F |
| The pitiless hours like years and ages creep | P |
| A night seems termless hell This dreadful strain | F |
| Of thought and consciousness which never ceases | B |
| Or which some moments' stupor but increases | B |
| This worse than woe makes wretches there insane | F |
| - | |
| They leave all hope behind who enter there | B |
| One certitude while sane they cannot leave | C |
| One anodyne for torture and despair | B |
| The certitude of Death which no reprieve | C |
| Can put off long and which divinely tender | B |
| But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render | B |
| That draught whose slumber nothing can bereave | C |
| - | |
| - | |
| - | |
| II | D |
| - | |
| Because he seemed to walk with an intent | B |
| I followed him who shadowlike and frail | Q |
| Unswervingly though slowly onward went | B |
| Regardless wrapt in thought as in a veil | Q |
| Thus step for step with lonely sounding feet | B |
| We travelled many a long dim silent street | B |
| - | |
| At length he paused a black mass in the gloom | E |
| A tower that merged into the heavy sky | B |
| Around the huddled stones of grave and tomb | E |
| Some old God's acre now corruption's sty | B |
| He murmured to himself with dull despair | B |
| Here Faith died poisoned by this charnel air | B |
| - | |
| Then turning to the right went on once more | B |
| And travelled weary roads without suspense | B |
| And reached at last a low wall's open door | B |
| Whose villa gleamed beyond the foliage dense | B |
| He gazed and muttered with a hard despair | B |
| Here Love died stabbed by its own worshipped pair | B |
| - | |
| Then turning to the right resumed his march | R |
| And travelled street and lanes with wondrous strength | S |
| Until on stooping through a narrow arch | R |
| We stood before a squalid house at length | S |
| He gazed and whispered with a cold despair | B |
| Here Hope died starved out in its utmost lair | B |
| - | |
| When he had spoken thus before he stirred | B |
| I spoke perplexed by something in the signs | B |
| Of desolation I had seen and heard | B |
| In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines | B |
| Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed | B |
| Can Life still live By what doth it proceed | B |
| - | |
| As whom his one intense thought overpowers | B |
| He answered coldly Take a watch erase | B |
| The signs and figures of the circling hours | B |
| Detach the hands remove the dial face | B |
| The works proceed until run down although | B |
| Bereft of purpose void of use still go | B |
| - | |
| Then turning to the right paced on again | F |
| And traversed squares and travelled streets whose glooms | B |
| Seemed more and more familiar to my ken | F |
| And reached that sullen temple of the tombs | B |
| And pau | P |
James Thomson
(1)
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