[II. Fog]
Like bodiless water passing in a sigh,
Through palsied streets the fatal shadows flow,
And in their sharp disastrous undertow
Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky.
The towery vista sinks upon the eye,
As if it heard the horns of Jericho,
Black and dissolved; nor could the founder, know
How what was built so bright should daily die.
Thy mood with man's is broken and blent in,
City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown
The natural light in which thy life began;
Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin,
Greater and elder yet the love of man
Full in thy look, though the dark visor's down.
[III. St. Peter-ad-Vincula]
Too well I know, pacing the place of awe,
Three Queens, young save in trouble, moulder by;
More in his halo, Monmouth's mocking eye,
The eagle Essex in a harpy's claw;
Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw
Sundown of Scotland; how with treasons lie
White martyrdoms: rank in a company
Breaker and builder of the eternal Law.
Oft as I come, the piteous garden-row
Of ruined roses hanging from the stem,
Where winds of old defeat yet batter them,
Infects me: suddenly must I depart,
Ere thought of man's injustice then and now
Add to these aisles one other broken heart.