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Quotes from The City of Dreadful Night — James Thomson

1834–1882 Scotland

← All quotes by James Thomson

9 quotes

For life is but a dream whose shapes return,
Some frequently, some seldom, some by night
And some by day.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

The world rolls round for ever like a mill;
It grinds out death and life and good and ill;
It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years?

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

And all sad scenes and thoughts and feelings vanish
In that sweet sleep no power can ever banish,
That one best sleep which never wakes again.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

The City is of Night, but not of Sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain;
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep,
A night seems termless hell.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

The mighty river flowing dark and deep,
With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides,
Vague-sounding through the City’s sleepless sleep,
Is named the River of the Suicides.

The City of Dreadful Night (1870)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: James Thomson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.