Classic Poem

The days begin to wane, and evening lifts
Her eyes the sooner towards the vales of sleep;
The yellow leaf upon the night-breeze drifts
And winter-voices thunder from the deep;
Thammuz grows pale in death, the Queen of Shades
Mocks sad-eyed Ishtar and her mourning maids.

Prostrate along the Babylonish halls,
On alabaster floors the women moan,
All unadmired the lilac-tinted walls
Bespangled wantonly, and sculptured stone;
For Thammuz dies; bereft, the Queen of Love;
Melt into tears, O Earth, O Heaven above!

Let all the Land between the Rivers sigh,
And such as ever danced with throbbing veins
To Ishtar's music, fill the sodden sky,
With lamentation and most doleful strains.
Thammuz is dead; no more the shepherd leads
His golden flock adown Im's jewelled meads.

Proud Larsam of Chaldean cities blest,
Famed for the glories of her sun-god's home,
Erech, where countless Kings are laid to rest,
And Eridhu, wet with the salt sea-foam; —
Princes and priests and lustrous maidens there
Sing plaintive hymns to Thammuz, young and fair.

And out upon Shumir-Accadian plains,
Beneath the orient night, the shepherd boy
Blows from his oaten pipe the sweet refrains
That tell of Ishtar's one-time joy;
Ana, lord of the starry realms of space,
Roams near to earth seeking the warm god's face.

Yet full-zoned Ishtar will not weep for aye,
Nor will the land forever saddened be;
For Thammuz is not dead, some spring-time day
He will appear in greater majesty:
Chaldean lovers will take heart again,
The Queen of Love will kiss the sons of men.