THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town ;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
Up domes-up spires-up kingly halls—
Up fanes-up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye-

Not the gaily-jeweled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass

No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea-

No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave-there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide-

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow--
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

THE SLEEPER.

AT midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically

Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the

The lily lolls upon the wave;

grave;

Wrapping the fog about its breast,

The ruin moulders into rest;

Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!-and lo! where lies
(Her casement open to the skies)
Irene, with her Destinies !

Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,

Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy

So fitfully-so fearfully

Above the closed and fringed lid

'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!