Explore "The City of Dreadful Night" by James Thomson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Some say that phantoms haunt those shadowy streets, And mingle freely there with sparse mankind; And tell of ancient woes and black defeats, And murmur mysteries in the grave enshrined: But others think them visions of illusion, Or even men gone far in self-confusion; No man there being wholly sane in mind.
And yet a man who raves, however mad, Who bares his heart and tells of his own fall, Reserves some inmost secret good or bad: The phantoms have no reticence at all: The nudity of flesh will blush though tameless The extreme nudity of bone grins shameless, The unsexed skeleton mocks shroud and pall.