A Dead City

Twilight ascends the abandoned ramps of noon Within an ancient land, whose after-time Unfathomably shadows its ruined prime. Like rising mist the night increases soon Round shattered palaces, ere yet the moon On mute, unsentried walls and turrets climb, And touch with pallor of sepulchral rime The desert where a city's bones are strewn. She comes at last: unsepultured, they show In all the hoary starkness of old stone. From out a shadow like the lips of Death Issues a wind, that through the ruins blown, Cries like a prophet's ghost, with waiting breath, The weirds of finished and forgotten woe.