
Part I
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)
Source: The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror
Part I
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)
Skyline Pigeon
Song lyrics, Empty Sky (1969)
Founding Address (1876)
Context: The world is dark around us and the prospect seems deepening in gloom. and yet there is light ahead. On the volume of the past in starry characters it is written — the starry legend greets us shining through the misty vistas of the future — that the great and noble shall not perish from among the sons of men, that the truth will triumph in the end, and that even the humblest of her servants may in this become the instrument of unending good. We are aiding in laying the foundations of a mighty edifice, whose completion shall not be seen in our day, no, nor in centuries upon centuries after us. But happy are we, indeed, if we can contribute even the least towards so high a consummation. The time calls for action. Up, then, and let us do our part faithfully and well. And oh, friends, our children's children will hold our memories dearer for the work which we begin this hour.
“For a world with so much sun we live in a dark place, in a dark time.”
ibid
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun
Anonymous 17th century comment on the flyleaf of the Lambeth Manuscript of Traherne’s works; cited from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 55, p. 208.
Criticism