Poi di tanto adoprar, di tanti moti D'ogni celeste, ogni terrena cosa, Girando senza posa, Per tornar sempre la donde son mosse; Uso alcuno, alcun frutto Indovinar non so. Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve Ogni creata cosa, In te, morte, si posa Nostra ignuda natura; Lieta no, ma sicura Dell' antico dolor . . . Pero ch' esser beato Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato.

—Leopardi

PROEM

Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I write My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears." Yet why evoke the spectres of black night To blot the sunshine of exultant years? Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden? Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden, And wail life's discords into careless ears? Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles, False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth; Because it gives some sense of power and passion In helpless innocence to try to fashion Our woe in living words howe'er uncouth. Surely I write not for the hopeful young, Or those who deem their happiness of worth, Or such as pasture and grow fat among The shows of life and feel nor doubt nor dearth, Or pious spirits with a God above them To sanctify and glorify and love them, Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth. For none of these I write, and none of these Could read the writing if they deigned to try; So may they flourish in their due degrees, On our sweet earth and in their unplaced sky. If any cares for the weak words here written, It must be some one desolate, Fate-smitten, Whose faith and hopes are dead, and who would die. Yes, here and there some weary wanderer In that same city of tremendous night, Will understand the speech and feel a stir Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight; "I suffer mute and lonely, yet another Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother Travels the same wild paths though out of sight." O sad Fraternity, do I unfold Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore? Nay, be assured; no secret can be told To any who divined it not before: None uninitiate by many a presage Will comprehend the language of the message, Although proclaimed aloud for evermore.

I

The City is of Night; perchance of Death But certainly of Night; for never there Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath After the dewy dawning's cold grey air: The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity The sun has never visited that city, For it dissolveth in the daylight fair. Dissolveth like a dream of night away; Though present in distempered gloom of thought And deadly weariness of heart all day. But when a dream night after night is brought Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many Recur each year for several years, can any Discern that dream from real life in aught? For life is but a dream whose shapes return, Some frequently, some seldom, some by night And some by day, some night and day: we learn, The while all change and many vanish quite, In their recurrence with recurrent changes A certain seeming order; where this ranges We count things real; such is memory's might. A river girds the city west and south, The main north channel of a broad lagoon, Regurging with the salt tides from the mouth; Waste marshes shine and glister to the moon For leagues, then moorland black, then stony ridges; Great piers and causeways, many noble bridges, Connect the town and islet suburbs strewn. Upon an easy slope it lies at large And scarcely overlaps the long curved crest Which swells out two leagues from the river marge. A trackless wilderness rolls north and west, Savannahs, savage woods, enormous mountains, Bleak uplands, black ravines with torrent fountains; And eastward rolls the shipless sea's unrest. The city is not ruinous, although Great ruins of an unremembered past, With others of a few short years ago More sad, are found within its precincts vast. The street-lamps always burn; but scarce a casement In house or palace front from roof to basement Doth glow or gleam athwart the mirk air cast. The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms, Amidst the soundless solitudes immense Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs. The silence which benumbs or strains the sense Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping: Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping, Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence! Yet as in some necropolis you find Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead, So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind Like tragic masks of stone. With weary tread, Each wrapt in his own doom, they wander, wander, Or sit foredone and desolately ponder Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head. Mature men chiefly, few in age or youth, A woman rarely, now and then a child: A child! If here the heart turns sick with ruth To see a little one from birth defiled, Or lame or blind, as preordained to languish Through youthless life, think how it bleeds with anguish To meet one erring in that homeless wild. They often murmur to themselves, they speak To one another seldom, for their woe Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak Itself abroad; and if at whiles it grow To frenzy which must rave, none heeds the clamour, Unless there waits some victim of like glamour, To rave in turn, who lends attentive show. The City is of Night, but not of Sleep; There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain; The pitiless hours like years and ages creep, A night seems termless hell. This dreadful strain Of thought and consciousness which never ceases, Or which some moments' stupor but increases, This, worse than woe, makes wretches there insane. They leave all hope behind who enter there: One certitude while sane they cannot leave, One anodyne for torture and despair; The certitude of Death, which no reprieve Can put off long; and which, divinely tender, But waits the outstretched hand to promptly render That draught whose slumber nothing can bereave1

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