 | Carol and Cadence |  |
FLOWERS OF NIGHT.
Grimy London in the gloaming fading lies:
Webs of Winter evening's weaving, falling from the sunless skies,
Film by film, a gradual ocean, gathers over all the haze:
Darkling, in the toneless twilight, drowse the unenlightened ways.
Webs of Winter evening's weaving, falling from the sunless skies,
Film by film, a gradual ocean, gathers over all the haze:
Darkling, in the toneless twilight, drowse the unenlightened ways.
Dark and darker every moment grows the air:
As on touchpaper enkindled sparks run scattering here and there,
Gas-lamps, one after another, prick the mantle of the dark,
Till their broid'ries all the highways out in lines of silver mark.
As on touchpaper enkindled sparks run scattering here and there,
Gas-lamps, one after another, prick the mantle of the dark,
Till their broid'ries all the highways out in lines of silver mark.
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Firefly-like, they flit and flutter o'er Night's soil;
Then, upon its branches settling, with the darkness for a foil,
Counterfeit a fallen heaven, mocking, with its faded stars,
At the empty sphere above it, blank behind its lightless bars.
Then, upon its branches settling, with the darkness for a foil,
Counterfeit a fallen heaven, mocking, with its faded stars,
At the empty sphere above it, blank behind its lightless bars.
Flowers of darkness, in the garden of the gloom,
Like the world-all's woes, exhaling from the pit of pain, they bloom,
In lugubrious lines assembling on the outskirts of the night,
As it were corpse-candles, kindled for the funeral of the light.
Like the world-all's woes, exhaling from the pit of pain, they bloom,
In lugubrious lines assembling on the outskirts of the night,
As it were corpse-candles, kindled for the funeral of the light.
Time was when their light-tracks, leading o'er Night's sea,
Like the moon upon the waters, hither, thither, endlessly,
Ways unto my youthful fancy to the worlds of Faerie seemed,
Where the Paradises waited, of whose splendours then I dreamed.
Like the moon upon the waters, hither, thither, endlessly,
Ways unto my youthful fancy to the worlds of Faerie seemed,
Where the Paradises waited, of whose splendours then I dreamed.
Flowers of Night, for what you are I know you now,
Wreckers' lights, that to perdition lure and lead the shipman's prow;
And with sadness, not with gladness, now I view your wandering fires,
Emanations from the marshes of the world of waste desires.
Wreckers' lights, that to perdition lure and lead the shipman's prow;
And with sadness, not with gladness, now I view your wandering fires,
Emanations from the marshes of the world of waste desires.
| Carol and Cadence | |