Classic Poem

Lisbon, enamoured of her beauty, lay
Girt with a rosary of fragrant flowers;
Sun-loved and radiant in a maze of bowers,
She dreamed the idle Summer hours away.

In grateful mood, in shy, coquettish play,
She called the Spirits and mysterious Powers
That guard and beautify her with their dowers,
To come and share her soft, eternal May.

Then the earth trembled, and the flawless sky
Grew black with ominous shadows of despair,
While tall towers tottered in a sudden flame!
A fiery hurricane of hell swept by,
And in an utter darkness everywhere,
With death and doom, the awful Spirits came!