It was golden and splendid, <br />That City of light; <br />A vision suspended <br />In deeps of the night; <br />A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white. <br /> <br />I remember the season <br />It dawn'd on my gaze; <br />The mad time of unreason, <br />The brain-numbing days <br />When Winter, white-sheeted and ghastly, stalks onward to torture and craze. <br /> <br />More lovely than Zion <br />It shone in the sky <br />When the beams of Orion <br />Beclouded my eye, <br />Bringing sleep that was filled with dim mem'ries of moments obscure and gone by. <br /> <br />Its mansions were stately, <br />With carvings made fair, <br />Each rising sedately <br />On terraces rare, <br />And the gardens were fragrant and bright with strange miracles blossoming there. <br /> <br />The avenues lur'd me <br />With vistas sublime; <br />Tall arches assur'd me <br />That once on a time <br />I had wander'd in rapture beneath them, and bask'd in the Halcyon clime. <br /> <br />On the plazas were standing <br />A sculptur'd array; <br />Long bearded, commanding, <br />rave men in their day- <br />But one stood dismantled and broken, its bearded face battered away. <br /> <br />In that city effulgent <br />No mortal I saw, <br />But my fancy, indulgent <br />To memory's law, <br />Linger'd long on the forms in the plazas, and eyed their stone features with <br />awe. <br /> <br />I fann'd the faint ember <br />That glow'd in my mind, <br />And strove to remember <br />The aeons behind; <br />To rove thro' infinity freely, and visit the past unconfin'd. <br /> <br />Then the horrible warning <br />Upon my soul sped <br />Like the ominous morning <br />That rises in red, <br />And in panic I flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead.<br /><br />Howard Phillips Lovecraft<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-city-21/
