The mansion stood apart in its own ground;In front thereof a fragrant garden-lawn, High trees about it, and the whole walled round:
The massy iron gates were both withdrawn;And every window of its front shed light, 5Portentous in that City of the Night.
But though thus lighted it was deadly still As all the countless bulks of solid gloom;Perchance a congregation to fulfil Solemnities of silence in this doom, 10Mysterious rites of dolour and despair Permitting not a breath or chant of prayer?
Broad steps ascended to a terrace broad Whereon lay still light from the open door;The hall was noble, and its aspect awed,15Hung round with heavy black from dome to floor;And ample stairways rose to left and right Whose balustrades were also draped with night.
I paced from room to room, from hall to hall, Nor any life throughout the maze discerned; 20But each was hung with its funereal pall, And held a shrine, around which tapers burned, With picture or with statue or with bust, all copied from the same fair form of dust:
A woman very young and very fair; 25Beloved by bounteous life and joy and youth, And loving these sweet lovers, so that care And age and death seemed not for her in sooth:
Alike as stars, all beautiful and bright, these shapes lit up that mausolean night.30At length I heard a murmur as of lips, And reached an open oratory hung With heaviest blackness of the whole eclipse;Beneath the dome a fuming censer swung;
And one lay there upon a low white bed, 35With tapers burning at the foot and head:
The Lady of the images, supine, Deathstill, lifesweet, with folded palms she lay:
And kneeling there as at a sacred shrine A young man wan and worn who seemed to pray: 40A crucifix of dim and ghostly white Surmounted the large altar left in night:--The chambers of the mansion of my heart, In every one whereof thine image dwells, Are black with grief eternal for thy sake.45The inmost oratory of my soul, Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead, Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.
I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross, With eyes forever fixed upon that face, 50So beautiful and dreadful in its calm.
I kneel here patient as thou liest there;As patient as a statue carved in stone, Of adoration and eternal grief.
While thou dost not awake I cannot move;55And something tells me thou wilt never wake, And I alive feel turning into stone.
Most beautiful were Death to end my grief, Most hateful to destroy the sight of thee, Dear vision better than all death or life.60But I renounce all choice of life or death, For either shall be ever at thy side, And thus in bliss or woe be ever well.--He murmured thus and thus in monotone, Intent upon that uncorrupted face,65Entranced except his moving lips alone:
I glided with hushed footsteps from the place.
This was the festival that filled with light That palace in the City of the Night.
