What will the beautiful city do,
Girt with a cordon of steel and fire?
Pale is her glory of golden hue,
Slowly totters its crumbling spire.
Her crowds no longer in gay attire
The airy goddess of mirth pursue,
Her altar of love is a funeral pyre —
What will the beautiful city do?

How changed from the days when the monarchs drank
Deep from the wine of her blood-red cup!
She frowned, and the proudest nations shrank;
She tore them down, and she lifted up.
Glad were the vanquished her draught to sup,
Eagerly joining the revellers' rank;
They feared her sword, but they loved her cup —
How changed from the days when the monarchs drank!

Hers were splendor and wealth and power;
Hers are anguish and wrath and gloom.
Lightly she valued the golden hour;
Sad and silent she waits her doom.
A poison lurked in the purple bloom
That tainted many a fragrant bower;
The hand wrote Mene about the room —
Vanish splendor and wealth and power.

She stands at bay with her shattered sword;
Her eyes are gleaming with sullen glare;
Sternly fronting the hostile horde,
With the valor born of a strong despair —
A strength all boundless to do and dare
Rather than yield to a foreign lord.
No hand shall ever her sceptre share —
She stands at bay with her shattered sword.

Ah, would that it might not be too late
To cancel the sins of a thousand years,
And safely sever from iron fate,
By priceless tribute of blood and tears,
The future freighted with horrid fears,
The destiny hovering desolate,
The flapping fiend that lours and leers —
Would that it might not be too late!