Lines Composed in Sleep

Dreamed before 1887 by Owen Meredith (Robert, Earl of Lytton)

This is the place. Here flourish'd Wicked Deeds And wither'd, in a world without a name, Buried ere ours was born. Fierce troops of crimes Weapon'd and crown'd, athwart a desert land, A wasted loveliness, to reach this place Travell'd in pomp: here settled, and here died, Grown old and weak: and, dying left behind No chronicle upon the bare rock graven Of what they were or what they did. The lives They cramm'd with evil, all their wicked loves, Their wicked hates, Death and slow Time have turn'd Into a sly grey silent ghastliness, A stealthy-footed Fear, that prowls for prey, Creeps on the wretch who wanders here unwarn'd, Catches him, with long fingers, by the head, Nor lets him go till all his mind is gone. This was their city's tower'd acropolis, This sprawling troop of roofless ruin huge Whose heart is hollowness. These broken ribs Of crumbled stone and mounds of rippling grass Were walls whose builders, when those walls were built, Kings put to death, that none the plan might tell Of secret chambers cruelly contrived For lust and murder: and therein were born Abominable pleasures. Round them now Rank ivy rustles with the revelry Of spangled reptiles. Down in a dry well There hath been dwelling for three thousand years An old white newt, whiter than leprosy. He only knows the long-forgotten names Of those strong scarlet blossoms on the brink That once were Sins.