Lo！ Death has reared himself a 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 the 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 that winds have been

    On seas less hideously serene.

    But lo a stir is in the air！

    The wave- there is a movement there！

    As if the 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.