The City at the End of Things / Lampman

The City at the End of Things


Beside the pounding cataracts Of midnight streams unknown to us ’Tis builded in the leafless tracts And valleys huge of Tartarus. Lurid and lofty and vast it seems; It hath no rounded name that rings, But I have heard it called in dreams The City of the End of Things.

Its roofs and iron towers have grown None knoweth how high within the night, But in its murky streets far down A flaming terrible and bright Shakes all the stalking shadows there, Across the walls, across the floors, And shifts upon the upper air From out a thousand furnace doors;

And all the while an awful sound Keeps roaring on continually, And crashes in the ceaseless round Of a gigantic harmony. Through its grim depths re-echoing And all its weary height of walls, With measured roar and iron ring, The inhuman music lifts and falls. Where no thing rests and no man is, And only fire and night hold sway; The beat, the thunder and the hiss Cease not, and change not, night nor day.

And moving at unheard commands, The abysses and vast fires between, Flit figures that with clanking hands Obey a hideous routine; They are not flesh, they are not bone, They see not with the human eye, And from their iron lips is blown A dreadful and monotonous cry; And whoso of our mortal race Should find that city unaware, Lean Death would smite him face to face, And blanch him with its venomed air: Or caught by the terrific spell, Each thread of memory snapt and cut, His soul would shrivel and its shell Go rattling like an empty nut.

It was not always so, but once, In days that no man thinks upon, Fair voices echoed from its stones, The light above it leaped and shone: Once there were multitudes of men, That built that city in their pride, Until its might was made, and then They withered age by age and died. But now of that prodigious race, Three only in an iron tower, Set like carved idols face to face, Remain the masters of its power; And at the city gate a fourth, Gigantic and with dreadful eyes, Sits looking toward the lightless north, Beyond the reach of memories; Fast rooted to the lurid floor, A bulk that never moves a jot, In his pale body dwells no more, Or mind, or soul,— an idiot!

But sometime in the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the master’s touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness absolute as death Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires shall moulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town The silence of eternal night Shall gather close and settle down. All its grim grandeur, tower and hall, Shall be abandoned utterly, And into rust and dust shall fall From century to century; Nor ever living thing shall grow, Or trunk of tree, or blade of grass; No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow, Nor sound of any foot shall pass: Alone of its accursed state, One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there.