 | Fantasy and Passion |  |
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THE CITY.
When night is on the city and silence reigns,
How all its dark tranquillity, bathed in sleep,
Is like that quietude of the ocean's deep
Remotely above whose realm the surge complains!
For even as monsters that o'er weird domains
Of cold subaqueous dimness dart and creep,
Within the vague metropolis wakeful keep
Those hideous vices that its heart retains!
How all its dark tranquillity, bathed in sleep,
Is like that quietude of the ocean's deep
Remotely above whose realm the surge complains!
For even as monsters that o'er weird domains
Of cold subaqueous dimness dart and creep,
Within the vague metropolis wakeful keep
Those hideous vices that its heart retains!
In fancy I watch black crimes like sea-growths loom;
In fancy I view large hopes, once fair and whole,
Grown wrecks where memory's mosses now unfurl.
Yet here and there, amid the encircling gloom,
I know that some serene exceptional soul
Dwells in its lovely purity, like a pearl!
In fancy I view large hopes, once fair and whole,
Grown wrecks where memory's mosses now unfurl.
Yet here and there, amid the encircling gloom,
I know that some serene exceptional soul
Dwells in its lovely purity, like a pearl!
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