Twilight ascends the abandoned ramps of noon <br />Within an ancient land, whose after-time <br />Unfathomably shadows its ruined prime. <br />Like rising mist the night increases soon <br />Round shattered palaces, ere yet the moon <br />On mute, unsentried walls and turrets climb, <br />And touch with pallor of sepulchral rime <br />The desert where a city's bones are strewn. <br /> <br />She comes at last: unsepultured, they show <br />In all the hoary starkness of old stone. <br />From out a shadow like the lips of Death <br />Issues a wind, that through the ruins blown, <br />Cries like a prophet's ghost, with waiting breath, <br />The weirds of finished and forgotten woe.<br /><br />Clark Ashton Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-dead-city/
