Classic Poem

I

Phantoms of many a dead idolatry,
Dream-rescued from oblivion, in mine ear
Your very names are strange and great to hear,
A sound of ancientness and majesty,
Memphis and Shushan, Carthage, Meroi,
And crowned, before these ages rose, with fame,
Troja, long vanished in Achaean flame,
On and Cyrene, perished utterly.
Things old and strange and dim to dream upon,
Cumae and Sardis, cities waste and gone;
And that pale river by whose ghostly strand
Thebes' monstrous tombs and desolate altars stand,
Baalbec, and Tyre, and buried Babylon,
And ruined Tadmor in the desert sand.

II

Of Ur and Erech and Accad who shall tell
And Calneh in the land of Shinar. Time
Hath made them but the substance of a rhyme.
And where are Ninus and the towers that fell,
When Jahveh's anger was made visible?
Where now are Sepharvaim and its dead?
Hammath and Arpad? In their ruined stead
The wild ass and the maneless lion dwell.
In Paestum now the roses bloom no more,
But the wind wails about the barren shore,
An echo in its gloomed and ghostly reeds.
And many a city of an elder age,
Now nameless, fallen in some antique rage,
Lies worn to dust, and none shall know its deeds.