"The City of Dreadful Night" (A Poem)

Originally published in the National Reformer in 1874, James Thomson’s lengthy poem “The City of Dreadful Night” paints a graphic image of a ruined city, where the narrator encounters tormented souls presided over by Melancolia.[1] Although the poem makes clear references to elements like German artist Albrecht Durer’s 1514 engraving Melencolia, what city Thomson alludes to is left vague, leading some scholars like Cheng Chu-Chueh to postulate it is a bleak image of industrial London.[2] Below is section four, where the narrator stands in the middle of the town’s square and surveys the horrors of its contents.

 

He stood alone within the spacious square

Declaiming from the central grassy mound,

With head uncovered and with streaming hair,

As if large multitudes were gathered round:

A Stalwart shape, the gestures full of might,

The glances burning with unnatural light:

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: All was black,

In heaven no single star, on earth no track;

A brooding hush without a stir or note,

The air so thick it clotted in my throat;

And thus for hours; then some enormous things

Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings:

But I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear.

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire

Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;

The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath

Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;

Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold

Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:

But I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Lo you, there,

That hillock burning with a brazen glare;

Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow

Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;

A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell

For Devil’s roll-call and some fête of Hell:

Yet I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear.

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Meteors ran

And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span;

The zenith opened to a gulf of flame,

The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame:

The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged

And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged:

Yet I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Air once more,

And I was close upon a wild sea-shore;

Enormous cliffs arose on either hand,

The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand;

White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew;

The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue:

And I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: On the left

The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft;

There stopped and burned out black, except a rim,

A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim;

Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west,

And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest:

Still I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: From the right

A shape came slowly with a ruddy light;

A woman with a red lamp in her hand,

Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand;

O desolation moving with such grace!

O anguish with such beauty in thy face.

I fell as on my bier,

Hope travailed with such fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: I was twain,

Two selves distinct that cannot join again;

One stood apart and knew but could not stir,

And watched the other stark in swoon and her;

And she came on, and never turned aside,

Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:

And as she came more near

My soul grew mad with fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: Hell is mild

And piteous matched with that accursèd wild;

A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,

A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud;

That lamp she held was her own burning heart,

Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart;

The mystery was clear;

Mad rage had swallowed fear. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: By the sea

She knelt and bent above that senseless me;

Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there,

She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair;

She murmured words of pity, love, and woe,

She heeded not the level rushing flow:

And mad with rage and fear,

I stood stonebound so near. 

 

As I came through the desert thus it was,

As I came through the desert: When the tide

Swept up to her there kneeling by my side,

She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne

Away, and this vile me was left forlorn;

I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart,

Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart:

They love; their doom is drear,

Yet they nor hope nor fear;

But I, what do I here?[3]

 

Works Referenced 

 

Drabble, Margaret, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. 

 

Chu-Chueh, Cheng. “The Importance of Being London: Looking for Signs of the Metropolis in James Thomson’s ‘City of Dreadful Night.’” Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London 3.1 (2005). 

 

Thomson, James. “The City of Dreadful Night.” The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems. London: Bertram Dobell, 1899. 1-48.

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[1] Drabble, 979-980.

[2] Chu-Chueh.

[3] Thomson, 10-15.