Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/76

---

The great mind destitute of moral faith;
Thou scourgest down to Night and utter Death,
Or penal spheres of retribution just.

O mighty Spirit, fraudful and malign,
Demon of madness and perversity!
The evil passions which may make me thine
Are not yet irrepressible in me;
And I have pierced thy mask of riant youth,
And seen thy form in all its hideous truth:
I will not, Dreadful Mother, call on Thee.

Last Thou, retirèd nun and throneless queen,
Our Lady of Oblivion, last Thou:
Of human stature, of abstracted mien;
Upon whose pallid face and drooping brow
Are shadowed melancholy dreams of Doom,
And deep absorption into silent gloom,
And weary bearing of the heavy Now.

Thou art all shrouded in a gauzy veil,
Sombrous and cloudlike; all, except that face
Of subtle loveliness though weirdly pale.
Thy soft, slow-gliding footsteps leave no trace,