In deepening shades the haunting vision swims; A denser greyness settles o'er the stream; The domes are veiled; the wondrous City dims— Dims as a dream: The night transforms it to a palace vast Lit with a thousand lamps from cryptic wires; The vaporous walls are phantoms of the Past, Strange with vague spires: Huge, peopled monoliths that touch the skies, Whose indeterminate bases baffle sight, Each with its Argus, incandescent eyes Pierces the night: Undreamt-of heights of glimmering marble loom Like some enchanted fabric wrought of air; Gigantic shafts of insubstantial gloom Lift, shadowy, there: Could fabled Camelot of the poet's dream Surpass these towers soaring from the mist?— These steel-ribbed granite miracles that gleam Dim amethyst? ... Slow on the tide, from murky coves remote, The freighted barges move, laboriously, While some palatial, golden-lighted boat Steams for the sea: Now that the moon is breaking through the cloud The radiant halo o'er the City pales; Shimmer the dusky wharves with mast and shroud And furlèd sails: Soft strains of music, hovering, drift away; In cloudy turrets toll the spectral bells; While the sea-voices, from the wastes of grey, Send faint farewells: The homing sloops are sheltered in the slip: The silence deepens; and up-stream, afar, A fading lantern on an anchored ship Seems a lost star. |