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XIX

 
  The mighty river flowing dark and deep,
    With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides
  Vague-sounding through the City's sleepless sleep,
    Is named the River of the Suicides;
  For night by night some lorn wretch overweary,
  And shuddering from the future yet more dreary,
    Within its cold secure oblivion hides.
 
 
  One plunges from a bridge's parapet,
    As if by some blind and sudden frenzy hurled;
  Another wades in slow with purpose set
    Until the waters are above him furled;
  Another in a boat with dreamlike motion
  Glides drifting down into the desert ocean,
    To starve or sink from out the desert world.
 
 
  They perish from their suffering surely thus,
    For none beholding them attempts to save,
  The while thinks how soon, solicitous,
    He may seek refuge in the self-same wave;
  Some hour when tired of ever-vain endurance
  Impatience will forerun the sweet assurance
    Of perfect peace eventual in the grave.
 
 
  When this poor tragic-farce has palled us long,
    Why actors and spectators do we stay?—
  To fill our so-short roles out right or wrong;
    To see what shifts are yet in the dull play
  For our illusion; to refrain from grieving
  Dear foolish friends by our untimely leaving:
    But those asleep at home, how blest are they!
 
 
  Yet it is but for one night after all:
    What matters one brief night of dreary pain?
  When after it the weary eyelids fall
    Upon the weary eyes and wasted brain;
  And all sad scenes and thoughts and feelings vanish
  In that sweet sleep no power can ever banish,
    That one best sleep which never wakes again.
 

XX

 
  I sat me weary on a pillar's base,
    And leaned against the shaft; for broad moonlight
  O'erflowed the peacefulness of cloistered space,
    A shore of shadow slanting from the right:
  The great cathedral's western front stood there,
  A wave-worn rock in that calm sea of air.
 
 
  Before it, opposite my place of rest,
    Two figures faced each other, large, austere;
  A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,
    An angel standing in the moonlight clear;
  So mighty by magnificence of form,
  They were not dwarfed beneath that mass enorm.
 
 
  Upon the cross-hilt of the naked sword
    The angel's hands, as prompt to smite, were held;
  His vigilant intense regard was poured
    Upon the creature placidly unquelled,
  Whose front was set at level gaze which took
  No heed of aught, a solemn trance-like look.
 
 
  And as I pondered these opposed shapes
    My eyelids sank in stupor, that dull swoon
  Which drugs and with a leaden mantle drapes
    The outworn to worse weariness.  But soon
  A sharp and clashing noise the stillness broke,
  And from the evil lethargy I woke.
 
 
  The angel's wings had fallen, stone on stone,
    And lay there shattered; hence the sudden sound:
  A warrior leaning on his sword alone
    Now watched the sphinx with that regard profound;
  The sphinx unchanged looked forthright, as aware
  Of nothing in the vast abyss of air.
 
 
  Again I sank in that repose unsweet,
    Again a clashing noise my slumber rent;
  The warrior's sword lay broken at his feet:
    An unarmed man with raised hands impotent
  Now stood before the sphinx, which ever kept
  Such mien as if open eyes it slept.
 
 
  My eyelids sank in spite of wonder grown;
    A louder crash upstartled me in dread:
  The man had fallen forward, stone on stone,
    And lay there shattered, with his trunkless head
  Between the monster's large quiescent paws,
  Beneath its grand front changeless as life's laws.
 
 
  The moon had circled westward full and bright,
    And made the temple-front a mystic dream,
  And bathed the whole enclosure with its light,
    The sworded angel's wrecks, the sphinx supreme:
  I pondered long that cold majestic face
  Whose vision seemed of infinite void space.
 

XXI

 
  Anear the centre of that northern crest
    Stands out a level upland bleak and bare,
  From which the city east and south and west
    Sinks gently in long waves; and throned there
  An Image sits, stupendous, superhuman,
  The bronze colossus of a winged Woman,
    Upon a graded granite base foursquare.
 
 
  Low-seated she leans forward massively,
    With cheek on clenched left hand, the forearm's might
  Erect, its elbow on her rounded knee;
    Across a clasped book in her lap the right
  Upholds a pair of compasses; she gazes
  With full set eyes, but wandering in thick mazes
    Of sombre thought beholds no outward sight.
 
 
  Words cannot picture her; but all men know
    That solemn sketch the pure sad artist wrought
  Three centuries and threescore years ago,
    With phantasies of his peculiar thought:
  The instruments of carpentry and science
  Scattered about her feet, in strange alliance
    With the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught;
 
 
  Scales, hour-glass, bell, and magic-square above;
    The grave and solid infant perched beside,
  With open winglets that might bear a dove,
    Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed;
  Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,
  But all too impotent to lift the regal
    Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride;
 
 
  And with those wings, and that light wreath which seems
    To mock her grand head and the knotted frown
  Of  forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
    The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown
  Voluminous, indented, and yet rigid
  As if a shell of burnished metal frigid,
    The feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down;
 
 
  The comet hanging o'er the waste dark seas,
    The massy rainbow curved in front of it
  Beyond the village with the masts and trees;
    The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit,
  Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions
  Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions,
    The "MELENCOLIA" that transcends all wit.
 
 
  Thus has the artist copied her, and thus
    Surrounded to expound her form sublime,
  Her fate heroic and calamitous;
    Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time,
  Unvanquished in defeat and desolation,
  Undaunted in the hopeless conflagration
    Of the day setting on her baffled prime.
 
 
  Baffled and beaten back she works on still,
    Weary and sick of soul she works the more,
  Sustained by her indomitable will:
    The hands shall fashion and the brain shall pore,
  And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour,
  Till Death the friend-foe piercing with his sabre
    That mighty heart of hearts ends bitter war.
 
 
  But as if blacker night could dawn on night,
    With tenfold gloom on moonless night unstarred,
  A sense more tragic than defeat and blight,
    More desperate than strife with hope debarred,
  More fatal than the adamantine Never
  Encompassing her passionate endeavour,
    Dawns glooming in her tenebrous regard:
 
 
  To sense that every struggle brings defeat
    Because Fate holds no prize to crown success;
  That all the oracles are dumb or cheat
    Because they have no secret to express;
  That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain
  Because there is no light beyond the curtain;
    That all is vanity and nothingness.
 
 
  Titanic from her high throne in the north,
    That City's sombre Patroness and Queen,
  In bronze sublimity she gazes forth
    Over her Capital of teen and threne,
  Over the river with its isles and bridges,
  The marsh and moorland, to the stern rock-bridges,
    Confronting them with a coeval mien.
 
 
  The moving moon and stars from east to west
    Circle before her in the sea of air;
  Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest.
    Her subjects often gaze up to her there:
  The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,
  The weak new terrors; all, renewed assurance
    And confirmation of the old despair.