The City in the Sea - Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows

Lo!

death has reared himself throne

In a strange city lying alone

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

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 rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free

Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls

Up fanes, up Babylon, like walls

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers.

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet and the vine

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with luminous 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 some far-off happier sea

No heavings hint winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo!

a stir in the air

The wave, there is a movement there

As if towers had thrust aside

In slightly sinking the dull tide

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow

The hours are breathing faint and low

And when, amid no earthly moans

Down, down that town shall settle hence

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones

Shall do it reverence.