The City at the Centre
A/N - Well I'm done with bashing Blake, now I shall be plagerising Poe!
Disclaimer - I do not own Labyrinth or any of Edgar Allen Poe's poetry. Dayem! That's makes me a sad panda!
Lo! Jareth has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far below ground in thevdim West
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There paths and tunnels and towers
(Time eaten towers that tremble not!
Resemble nothing that is ours
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy walls do lie.
No rays from the Holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid tree
Streams up the turrets silently -
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free -
Up domes - up spires - up kingly halls -
Up fanes - up Babylon-like walls -
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculpted ivy adn stone flowers -
Up many and many a mavellous shrine
Whose weathered frieses intertwine
The viol, the violet and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy walls will lie.
So blends the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in the air;
While from a proud tower in the town
Jareth looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping falls
Yawn level with the luminous walls
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye -
Tempt the sleepers from their bed;
For no passages move, alone
Along that wilderness of stone -
No echoes tell that winds may swirl
Upon some far-off happier world -
No heaving hint that winds have been
On a land less hideously serene.
But lo! A stir is in the air!
The city - there is a movement there!
As if the walls were thrust aside,
By creatures living far and wide
As if there shadows had feebly given
A void withen the filmy Heaven.
The skies now have a redder glow -
The hours are brething faint and low -
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
A/N - Well I'm done with bashing Blake, now I shall be plagerising Poe!
Disclaimer - I do not own Labyrinth or any of Edgar Allen Poe's poetry. Dayem! That's makes me a sad panda!
Lo! Jareth has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far below ground in thevdim West
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There paths and tunnels and towers
(Time eaten towers that tremble not!
Resemble nothing that is ours
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy walls do lie.
No rays from the Holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid tree
Streams up the turrets silently -
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free -
Up domes - up spires - up kingly halls -
Up fanes - up Babylon-like walls -
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculpted ivy adn stone flowers -
Up many and many a mavellous shrine
Whose weathered frieses intertwine
The viol, the violet and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy walls will lie.
So blends the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in the air;
While from a proud tower in the town
Jareth looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping falls
Yawn level with the luminous walls
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye -
Tempt the sleepers from their bed;
For no passages move, alone
Along that wilderness of stone -
No echoes tell that winds may swirl
Upon some far-off happier world -
No heaving hint that winds have been
On a land less hideously serene.
But lo! A stir is in the air!
The city - there is a movement there!
As if the walls were thrust aside,
By creatures living far and wide
As if there shadows had feebly given
A void withen the filmy Heaven.
The skies now have a redder glow -
The hours are brething faint and low -
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.