LAW I (THE CITY IN THE SEA)

O death hath reared himself a throne
In a strange city, Paradiso
Far down within the dim West
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest
There shrines and palaces and towers are
Not like anything of ours, oh no
Ours never loom, to heaven with that ungodly green
Time-eaten towers that tremble not
Resemble nothing that is ours
Around, by lifting winds forgot
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie
No holy rays from heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently
Up thrones, up long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers
Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls
Up fanes, up Babylon-like walls
Up many a melancholy shrine
Lucid tablatures intertwine
The mask, the viol, and the vine
There, open temples, open graves
Are on the level with the waves
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed
For no ripples curl, alas
Along that wilderness of glass
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon a far-off happier sea
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air
While from the high towers of the town
Death looks gigantically down
But lo, a stir is in the air
The wave, there is a ripple there
As if the towers had thrown aside
In slightly sinking, the dull tide
As if the turret tops had given way
A vacuum within the filmy Heaven
The waves have now a redder glow
The very hours are breathing low
And when, amid no earthly moans
Down, that town shall settle hence
All hell, from a thousand thrones
Shall do it reverence
And Death, to somewhere happy climb
Shall give us undivided time