A VISION OF DOOM
by: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
- stood upon a hill. The setting sun
- Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
- And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
- That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
- Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up
- From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban,
- Took shapes forbidden and without a name.
- Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds
- With cries discordant, startled all the air,
- And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom
- The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled,
- And shrieks of women, and men's curses. All
- These visible shapes, and sounds no mortal ear
- Had ever heard, some spiritual sense
- Interpreted, though brokenly; for I
- Was haunted by a consciousness of crime,
- Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All
- These things malign, by sight and sound revealed,
- Were sin-begotten; that I knewno more
- And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams
- The sleepy senses babble to the brain
- Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice,
- But whence it came I knew not, cried aloud
- Some words to me in a forgotten tongue,
- Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn,
- Returned from the illimited inane.
- Again, but in a language that I knew,
- As in reply to something which in me
- Had shaped itself a thought, but found no words,
- It spake from the dread mystery about:
- "Immortal shadow of a mortal soul
- That perished with eternity, attend.
- What thou beholdest is as void as thou:
- The shadow of a poet's dreamhimself
- As thou, his soul as thine, long dead,
- But not like thine outlasted by its shade.
- His dreams alone survive eternity
- As pictures in the unsubstantial void.
- Excepting thee and me (and we because
- The poet wove us in his thought) remains
- Of nature and the universe no part
- Or vestige but the poet's dreams. This dread,
- Unspeakable land about thy feet, with all
- Its desolation and its terrorslo!
- 'T is but a phantom world. So long ago
- That God and all the angels since have died
- That poet livedyourself long deadhis mind
- Filled with the light of a prophetic fire,
- And standing by the Western sea, above
- The youngest, fairest city in the world,
- Named in another tongue than his for one
- Ensainted, saw its populous domain
- Plague-smitten with a nameless shame. For there
- Red-handed murder rioted; and there
- The people gathered gold, nor cared to loose
- The assassin's fingers from the victim's throat,
- But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed:
- 'Am I my brother's keeper? Let the Law
- Look to the matter.' But the Law did not.
- And there, O pitiful! the babe was slain
- Within its mother's breast and the same grave
- Held babe and mother; and the people smiled,
- Still gathering gold, and said: 'The Law, the Law,'
- Then the great poet, touched upon the lips
- With a live coal from Truth's high altar, raised
- His arms to heaven and sang a song of doom
- Sang of the time to be, when God should lean
- Indignant from the Throne and lift his hand,
- And that foul city be no more!a tale,
- A dream, a desolation and a curse!
- No vestige of its glory should survive
- In fact or memory: its people dead,
- Its site forgotten, and its very name
- Disputed."
-
- "Was the prophecy fulfilled?"
- The sullen disc of the declining sun
- Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
- And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
- That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
- Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up
- From dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban,
- Took shapes forbidden and without a name.
- Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds
- With cries discordant, startled all the air,
- And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom.
- But not to me came any voice again;
- And, covering my face with thin, dead hands,
- I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God!
"A Vision of Doom" is reprinted from Shapes of Clay. Ambrose Bierce. San Francisco: W. E. Wood, 1903. |
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