Classic Poem

Cease , impious boaster, with loud murmur lifted,
To rank your perished affluence as divine,
And vaunt the expanses of your stream as gifted
With lordlier reminiscences than mine!
For me, from Caucasus through leak passes wending,
Gorgeous Assyria's rarest charms were shown,
In all their warm exuberance far transcending
Your stern monotonies of sepulchral stone.

I made no advent, whether speedy or gentle,
Through blanks of landscape that all greeneries miss,
Journeying like you where torpors monumental
Had girt you in one austere necropolis.
For me long prosperous decades brought their sequel,
That stateliest city born beneath the sun!
How could your bulks of colorless granite equal
The dazzling eminences of Babylon?

There Asshur, first of deities, reigned supernal,
With shrines whose bright enormity overbrowed
The smoke of reverent sacrifice diurnal,
Where the mitred priests in snowy raiments bowed.
There luscious fruitages poured copious measures;
There gifts were stored from tributary states;
There camels, tottering under loads of treasures,
Trooped with swart conquerors through the brazen gates.

To shawms and harps my revelling kings quaffed wassail,
Between the august winged bulls, grotesque, severe,
Where the rainbow-hued pavilions rose colossal
O'er high aerial gardens, tier on tier.
And night, made scintillant with its tossing torches,
On silver and golden idols loved to shine,
On eunuchs lolling among the marble porches,
On roses wreathen above Damascus wine.

Like locust-clouds our multitudinous forces
Have swept with ravage along a thousand ways;
Like meteors our swift white Nisaean horses
Have flashed with iron chariots through mad frays.
We smote our enemies, all who dared assail us,
With javelins that no prowess of man out-thrust;
Sargon, Sennacherib, or Sardanapalus,
Alike we have levelled kingdoms to the dust!

How regally since old Nimrod have our races
Of stolid sovereigns waged their war-like harms,
With plumed tiaras above black-bearded faces
And bracelets glittering on bare tawny arms!
How deep our cavalries ploughed slaughterous channels
Through shuddering hosts that heard the keen bolts hiss!
How gloriously endures among our annals
The martial dominance of Semiramis!

To Baal or Merodach ceaseless praise was tendered,
Or Ashtaroth, sceptred with unearthly grace,
But haughtily fumed the frankincense we rendered
To Ishtar, terrible goddess of the chase.
For breaking our voluptuous Asian languor,
We rode as perilous pastime, without fear,
Where many a lion in his deadly anger
Roared challenge to the invulnerable spear!

Nor paths of victory we alone have followed,
But seers were ours, unravelling like a skein
The brilliant secrets of those heavens that hollowed
Their dome above the immense Chaldean plain,
Here, though its fated edifice has been smitten,
We watch our immortality throne her claim;
In stars our luminous epitaph is written;
Eternity is custodian of our fame!