III

  Although lamps burn along the silent streets,
    Even when moonlight silvers empty squares
  The dark holds countless lanes and close retreats;
    But when the night its sphereless mantle wears
  The open spaces yawn with gloom abysmal,                    5
  The sombre mansions loom immense and dismal,
    The lanes are black as subterranean lairs.

  And soon the eye a strange new vision learns:
    The night remains for it as dark and dense,
  Yet clearly in this darkness it discerns                    10
    As in the daylight with its natural sense;
  Perceives a shade in shadow not obscurely,
  Pursues a stir of black in blackness surely,
    Sees spectres also in the gloom intense.

  The ear, too, with the silence vast and deep                15
    Becomes familiar though unreconciled;
  Hears breathings as of hidden life asleep,
    And muffled throbs as of pent passions wild,
  Far murmurs, speech of pity or derision;
  but all more dubious than the things of vision,             20
    So that it knows not when it is beguiled.

  No time abates the first despair and awe,
    But wonder ceases soon; the weirdest thing
  Is felt least strange beneath the lawless law
    Where Death-in-Life is the eternal king;                  25
  Crushed impotent beneath this reign of terror,
  Dazed with mysteries of woe and error,
    The soul is too outworn for wondering.

                                    IV

  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,               5
  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,                     10
  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.                               15

  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;                    20
  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,                   25
  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