The City of Dreadful Night is one of my favorite poem sequences, but its marvelous gloom and pessimism could not prepare any reader to expect the delicate beauty and freshness Thomson was capable of in many of the short lyrical pieces that form the other part of this collection. As much as I revere The City, I expected Thomson to be rather a one-note poet. I couldn't have been more wrong. ( )

"no secret can be told
To any who divined it not before"

The poem I've wanted to read/write my entire life. It's what Hardy should have been like, and might have been if he hadn't been waylaid by anapests. ( )

A sequence of poems symbolizing depression. Its surprisingly awesome . Each poem is a little tableau set in this city where it's always night. There are various locations like the 'Bridge of Suicides' or the statue of 'Melancholia'.
This has such a great dark atmosphere to it. If your a fan of Lovecraft, Poe or Irving etc. then i can't imagine you not enjoying this.

Sample:
Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears."
Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years?
Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden?
Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden,
And wail life's discords into careless ears?

Second read: Yep still awesome. Not as many descriptions of the city as i remember, i guess it grew a bit in my imagination inbetween reads :) .

Heres the starting quotes in english i hate when books leave things in latin etc. :
Through me is the way into the city of pain. —Dante's Inferno

Then out of such endless working,
so many movements of everything in heaven and earth,
revolving incessantly,
only to return to the point from which they were moved:
from all this I can imagine neither purpose nor gain. —Leopardi’s Canti XXIII: Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia

Eternal alone in the world,
receiver of all created things,
in you, death, our naked being comes to rest;
joyful no, but safe from the age-old pain ...
For happiness is denied by fate to the living and denied to the dead. —Leopardi’s Dialogo di Federico Ruysch e delle sue mummie ( )

1188. The City of Dreadful Night, by James Thomson (Oct 1, 1972) Years ago I heard that this was the most doleful poem in the English language. So I long wanted to read it, and when I found a single 52-page volume of the poem I read it. I got nothing out of it. It never seems real--yes, it is dolorous--but how can one be sad over nothing? Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe is sadder and a better poem. ( )