Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE DOOMED CITY, by EDGAR ALLAN POE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DOOMED CITY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Lo! Death hath rear'd himself a throne
Last Line: Shall give his undivided time.
Subject(s): Cities; Death; Sea; Urban Life; Dead, The; Ocean


Lo! Death hath rear'd himself a throne
In a strange city, all alone,
Far down within the dim west --
And 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 any thing of ours --
O! no -- O! no -- ours never loom
To heaven with that ungodly gloom!
Time-eaten towers that tremble not!
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

A heaven that God doth not contemn
With stars is like a diadem --
We liken our ladies' eyes to them --
But there! that everlasting pall!
It would be mockery to call
Such dreariness a heaven at all.

Yet tho' no holy rays come down
On the long night-time of that town,
Light from the lurid, deep sea
Streams up the turrets silently --
Up thrones -- up long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptur'd ivy and stone flowers --
Up domes -- up spires -- up kingly halls --
Up fanes -- up Babylon-like walls --
Up many a melancholy shrine
Whose entablatures intertwine
The mask -- the viol -- and the vine.

There open temples -- open graves
Are on a level with the waves --
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye,
Not the gaily-jewell'd dead
Tempt the waters from their bed:
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass --
No swellings hint 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
A vacuum in the filmy heaven:
The waves have now a redder glow --
The very hours are breathing low --
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell rising from a thousand thrones
Shall do it reverence,
And Death to some more happy clime
Shall give his undivided time.





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