"It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted"

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.

In the Department of Poetry That Isn't Bad, I wish James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night were better known. It seems to show up only in the larger anthologies of Victorian poetry, where it completes with In Memoriam, Amours de Voyage, The Hunting of the Snark, and Goblin Market for the few long poem slots -- and that's good competition. It especially belongs alongside In Memoriam, as contrast: Tennyson offers a chronology of mourning, while Thomson lays out a topography of depression -- becoming our tour guide for its night-life. And the dreadful night is extensive.

Because he seemed to walk with an intent
  I followed him; who, shadowlike and frail,
Unswervingly though slowly onward went,
  Regardless, wrapt in thought as in a veil:
Thus step for step with lonely sounding feet
We travelled many a long dim silent street.

The City of Dreadful Night was once somewhat popular -- Kipling and Morris, among others, show its influences, and it hovers behind parts of "The Waste Land". Lankhmar is recognizably shaded by Thomson's City, and from that so are other fantastic urban areas, especially Tanith Lee's (who may well have been directly influenced).

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.

I won't claim that the verse isn't flawed, but it's the sort of purpleness that in the right mood is exactly the thing. Not just during long stretches of continual insomnia, either, though Thomson evokes that state all too well.

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.

Yet about two-thirds through, my attention tends to wander. Thomson plays his three notes well -- these being the responses to despair: enduring it, wallowing in it, and being crushed by it -- but they're the only notes here. They can be combined, while keeping to the same beat, to form only so many tunes. His habit of failing to nail the last line of stanzas eventually grates. But mostly, it's that there's no movement, aside from traveling once again in circles through the streets (following the example of part II, the first narrative section). The dreadful night never ends and no one, except for a lucky few, escape it. Reflecting this may be accurate, but it doesn't make for a good story, leaving us with a conclusion that lands with a muffled clump (even though it's describing a statue of Duerer's "Melancholia").

The moving moon and stars from east to west
  Circle before her in the sea of air;
Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest.
  Her subjects often gaze up to her there:
The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,
The weak new terrors; all, renewed assurance
  And confirmation of the old despair.

Anyway, I highly recommend this to anyone with a taste for exemplary Victorian poetry, looking for odes to melancholy, or who has gone, is going, or might one day go through a goth phase. (Would that more goth poets learned from it.)

---L.

"It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted"

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.

In the Department of Poetry That Isn't Bad, I wish James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night were better known. It seems to show up only in the larger anthologies of Victorian poetry, where it completes with In Memoriam, Amours de Voyage, The Hunting of the Snark, and Goblin Market for the few long poem slots -- and that's good competition. It especially belongs alongside In Memoriam, as contrast: Tennyson offers a chronology of mourning, while Thomson lays out a topography of depression -- becoming our tour guide for its night-life. And the dreadful night is extensive.

Because he seemed to walk with an intent
  I followed him; who, shadowlike and frail,
Unswervingly though slowly onward went,
  Regardless, wrapt in thought as in a veil:
Thus step for step with lonely sounding feet
We travelled many a long dim silent street.

The City of Dreadful Night was once somewhat popular -- Kipling and Morris, among others, show its influences, and it hovers behind parts of "The Waste Land". Lankhmar is recognizably shaded by Thomson's City, and from that so are other fantastic urban areas, especially Tanith Lee's (who may well have been directly influenced).

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.

I won't claim that the verse isn't flawed, but it's the sort of purpleness that in the right mood is exactly the thing. Not just during long stretches of continual insomnia, either, though Thomson evokes that state all too well.

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.

Yet about two-thirds through, my attention tends to wander. Thomson plays his three notes well -- these being the responses to despair: enduring it, wallowing in it, and being crushed by it -- but they're the only notes here. They can be combined, while keeping to the same beat, to form only so many tunes. His habit of failing to nail the last line of stanzas eventually grates. But mostly, it's that there's no movement, aside from traveling once again in circles through the streets (following the example of part II, the first narrative section). The dreadful night never ends and no one, except for a lucky few, escape it. Reflecting this may be accurate, but it doesn't make for a good story, leaving us with a conclusion that lands with a muffled clump (even though it's describing a statue of Duerer's "Melancholia").

The moving moon and stars from east to west
  Circle before her in the sea of air;
Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest.
  Her subjects often gaze up to her there:
The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,
The weak new terrors; all, renewed assurance
  And confirmation of the old despair.

Anyway, I highly recommend this to anyone with a taste for exemplary Victorian poetry, looking for odes to melancholy, or who has gone, is going, or might one day go through a goth phase. (Would that more goth poets learned from it.)

---L.

"Winter tucks her children in / her fragile china dolls"

For a two-week trip to Switzerland, I'm hoping to limit myself to two compact, chewy books.* Which is to say, they need to be portable, entertaining, and long enough to last me.

[Poll #1270742]

* Not counting guidebooks, of course.

---L.