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| I WAS Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded. | |
| Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute from afar. | |
| Ivory their outposts were—the guardrooms of them gilded, | |
| And garrisoned with Amazons invincible in war. | |
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| All the world went softly when it walked before my Cities— | 5 |
| Neither King nor Army vexed my peoples at their toil. | |
| Never horse nor chariot irked or overbore my Cities, | |
| Never Mob nor Ruler questioned whence they drew their spoil. | |
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| Banded, mailed and arrogant from sunrise unto sunset, | |
| Singing while they sacked it, they possessed the land at large. | 10 |
| Yet when men would rob them, they resisted, they made onset | |
| And pierced the smoke of battle with a thousand-sabred charge. | |
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| So they warred and trafficked only yesterday, my Cities. | |
| To-day there is no mark or mound of where my Cities stood. | |
| For the River rose at midnight and it washed away my Cities. | 15 |
| They are evened with Atlantis and the towns before the Flood. | |
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| Rain on rain-gorged channels raised the water-levels round them, | |
| Freshet backed on freshet swelled and swept their world from sight, | |
| Till the emboldened floods linked arms and, flashing forward, drowned them— | |
| Drowned my Seven Cities and their peoples in one night! | 20 |
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| Low among the alders lie their derelict foundations, | |
| The beams wherein they trusted and the plinths whereon they built— | |
| My rulers and their treasure and their unborn populations, | |
| Dead, destroyed, aborted, and defiled with mud and silt! | |
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| The Daughters of the Palace whom they cherished in my Cities, | 25 |
| My silver-tongued Princesses, and the promise of their May— | |
| Their bridegrooms of the June-tide—all have perished in my Cities, | |
| With the harsh envenomed virgins that can neither love nor play. | |
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| I was Lord of Cities—I will build anew my Cities, | |
| Seven, set on rocks, above the wrath of any flood. | 30 |
| Nor will I rest from search till I have filled anew my Cities | |
| With peoples undefeated of the dark, enduring blood. | |
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| To the sound of trumpets shall their seed restore my Cities | |
| Wealthy and well-weaponed, that once more may I behold | |
| All the world go softly when it walks before my Cities, | 35 |
| And the horses and the chariots fleeing from them as of old! | |
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