Read "JK. Huysmans" by Amy Lowell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A flickering glimmer through a window-pane, / A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass, / Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet / Across uneven pavements sunk in slime / To scatter and then quench itself in mist.
And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled / Against the jutting angle of a wall, / And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside / By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past, / A man was groping to what seemed a light.
His eyelids burnt and quivered with the strain / Of looking, and against his temples beat / The all enshrouding, suffocating dark.
He stumbled, lurched, and struck against a door / That opened, and a howl of obscene mirth / Grated his senses, wallowing on the floor / Lay men, and dogs and women in the dirt.
He sickened, loathing it, and as he gazed / The candle guttered, flared, and then went out.
Through travail of ignoble midnight streets / He came at last to shelter in a porch / Where gothic saints and warriors made a shield / To cover him, and tortured gargoyles spat / One long continuous stream of silver rain / That clattered down from myriad roofs and spires / Into a darkness, loud with rushing sound / Of water falling, gurgling as it fell, / But always thickly dark. Then as he leaned / Unconscious where, the great oak door blew back / And cast him, bruised and dripping, in the church.
His eyes from long sojourning in the night / Were blinded now as by some glorious sun; / He slowly crawled toward the altar steps.
He could not think, for heavy in his ears / An organ boomed majestic harmonies; / He only knew that what he saw was light! / He bowed himself before a cross of flame / And shut his eyes in fear lest it should fade.