A City in the Sea

Came to me when you adored little things but started building cities 

I called it the "city in the sea".

Death always rears itself on a throne

in a strange city lying alone.

Within far down dim in the west

where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

have now gone to their eternal rest.

No rays from the mighty heaven come down 

on the long nighttime of that very town.

But the lights from the lurid sea

streams up these turrets silently.

Up domes, up spires, up kingly halls

up fanes, up those creeping walls,

up shadowy long bowers of sculpted rusting ivory and dead flowers.

Resignly beneath the starry sky,

the melancholy waters lie.

But oh, the stirs in the air 

the waves, the movement is there.

The waves have now a redder glow, 

the hours breathe faint and low.

And when the earth amid no earthly moans,

down, down that town shall settle

I see hell rising from a thousand thrones.

Shall I do it reverence?

The city in the sea where hell once arose,

no one noticed but it was just my heart all this time in disguise.