The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-12-17

this study OF him | may not pursue nel,
but must be content TO take passage
here and there that indicates her method
and what manner Of thing his work OF
unique and sinister beauty is;-thls
work of which she says: Under the
darkness of deep waters, within the shell
of pessimism, grew this rare product OF
disease, the black pearl of poetry that is
named The City of Dreadful Night.
Of its inception she writes:
s'The City of Dreadful Night was I'M
agined during a sojourn in London,
where the environment and the climate,
added to depression of Thompson
spirits. i He walked the streets
of London, silent and lonely in the dark
ness of midnight, and stood upon the
bridge looking down into the DlacK !,
sullen waters, until the dawn sent MN
shivering to his house. These are the
scenes which reappear in the CITY Oh
Night and it's River of the SUICIDES.
The dismal town is, indeed, t0ta NOR
qa,so of London projected upon cloud.
Its architecture is the frozen music OF a
dead march heard in the insomnia that
has the illusions without the repose OF
Dreams
Mrs. Cavazza closes her comprehen
sive survey with these striking sentences
at once analysis and commentary:
'sTo the northward of the City of
Dreadful Night the rome image OF It's
tutelar goddess sits upon a granite ped
es al. She is the tremendous Melencholia
of Albrecht Durer surrounded by the
emblems of every human science; she
has toiled and is baff1ed at the end of the
day, and the denial of all things is in her
| ewes. To her tue jewellers of the tene-
brous town look to obtain new endur-
| ance or new terrors. She confirms to all
the old despair
sIn the magnificent eleven stanzas
which describe this defeated Titan woman
may be found the summing-up of James
Thomson's whole philosophy of pessi-
mism, expressed with fury Of conviction
able to fuse the material into one great
image. unique and memorable
Let me repeat some of the stanzas;
not the closing-in which the poet de-
SPARED of picturing even while he does
picture 'sthe 'Melencolia' that transcends
all wit''-for they must be given entire
or not at all, and are too many for my pur-
pose; but the three of the short seventh
section;
Some say that phantoms haunt those shadowy
streets,
And mingle freely there with sparse man
kind;
And tel of ancient woes and black defeats,
And murmur mysteries In the grave en-
shrined:
| But Others think them visions of illusion,
Or even men gone far in Self-confuSiOn;
No man there being wholly sane in mind.
And vet a man who raves, however mad,
| Who bareS his heart and tells of his own fall
Reserves some inmost s cret good or bad;
The phantoms have no reticence at ALL
The nudity of flesh will blush though tame
Il less,
The extreme nudity of bone grins shameless,
The unsexed skeleton mocks shroud and
| pail
have seen phantons there that were as men
And men that were as phantoms fit and
| roam;
| Marked shapes that were not living to my ken,
Caught breathing acrid as with Dead Sea
| foam:
The city rests for man so weird and awful,
| That his intrusion there might seem unlaw
| And phantoms there may have their proper
hoe.
With these stanzas must close an in
sufficient notice, land point the reader
seeking further intimacy with the City
of Dreadful Night to the book itself.
God forbid that he ever become dweller
therein. PHILIP WELLS.