The Mind

Fragment: The silence of a City, how awful at Midnight

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834

From Complete Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge (1912)

The Mind

The silence of a City, how awful at Midnight!
Mute as the battlements and crags and towers
That Fancy makes in the clouds, yea, as mute
As the moonlight that sleeps on the steady vanes.

The cell of a departed anchoret,
His skeleton and flitting ghost are there,
Sole tenants--
And all the City silent as the Moon
That steeps in quiet light the steady vanes
Of her huge temples.

✦ ✦ ✦

1804-5

MLA

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Fragment: The silence of a City, how awful at Midnight.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/coleridge/446/.

Chicago

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Fragment: The silence of a City, how awful at Midnight.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/coleridge/446/.

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