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(From Thalaba the Destroyer, Book V)
THE MANY-COLORED domes | |
| Yet wore one dusky hue; | |
| The cranes upon the mosque | |
| Kept their night-clatter still, | |
| When through the gate the early traveller passed. | 5 |
| And when, at evening, o’er the swampy plain | |
| The bittern’s boom came far, | |
| Distinct in darkness seen | |
| Above the low horizon’s lingering light, | |
| Rose the near ruins of old Babylon. | 10 |
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| Once from her lofty walls the charioteer | |
| Looked down on swarming myriads; once she flung | |
| Her arches o’er Euphrates’ conquered tide, | |
| And through her brazen portals when she poured | |
| Her armies forth, the distant nations looked | 15 |
| As men who watch the thunder-cloud in fear, | |
| Lest it should burst above them. She was fallen! | |
| The Queen of cities, Babylon, was fallen! | |
| Low lay her bulwarks; the black scorpion basked | |
| In the palace-courts; within the sanctuary | 20 |
| The she-wolf hid her whelps. | |
| Is yonder huge and shapeless heap, what once | |
| Hath been the aerial gardens, height on height | |
| Rising like Media’s mountains crowned with wood, | |
| Work of imperial dotage? Where the fame | 25 |
| Of Belus? Where the Golden Image now, | |
| Which at the sound of dulcimer and lute, | |
| Cornet and sackbut, harp and psaltery, | |
| The Assyrian slaves adored? | |
| A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon | 30 |
| Spreads o’er the blasted plain; | |
| The wandering Arab never sets his tent | |
| Within her walls; the shepherd eyes afar | |
| Her evil towers, and devious drives his flock. | |
| Alone unchanged, a free and bridgeless tide, | 35 |
| Euphrates rolls along, | |
| Eternal nature’s work. | |
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