They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles <br />Of forest night had hid eternal things, <br />They scaled the sky with towers and marble piles <br />To make a city for their revellings. <br /> <br />White and amazing to the lands around <br />That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose; <br />Crystal and ivory, sublimely crowned <br />With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows. <br /> <br />And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang, <br />While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains; <br />Never a voice of elder marvels sang, <br />Nor any eye called up the hills and plains. <br /> <br />Thus down the years, till on one purple night <br />A drunken minstrel in his careless verse <br />Spoke the vile words that should not see the light, <br />And stirred the shadows of an ancient curse. <br /> <br />Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield; <br />So on the spot where that proud city stood, <br />The shuddering dawn no single stone revealed, <br />But fled the blackness of a primal wood.<br /><br />Howard Phillips Lovecraft<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wood-3/
