The City in the Sea versuri

The City in the Sea lyrics by Basil Rathbone

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 and tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours
Around, by lifting winds forgot
Resignedly beneath the sky
The mеlancholy waters lie

No rays from the holy Hеaven 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-jewelled 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