Classic Poem

Sodom in all the splendor of her towers,
The monumental miracle and grace
Of all the haughty cities of the plain,
Throbbed and exulted in her love of life,
Like some great marble monster animate.
Beyond the bristling circuit of the walls,
Peopled by glittering sentinels at arms,
Stretched in a flowerful labyrinth of green
The leafy loveliness of Siddim's vale,
Teeming with orchards of ancestral trees,
Alive with grazing flocks and myriad birds,
A revel and delight of clustering vines,
Dotted with tranquil lakes and bastioned hills
Unto the limits of the Arkite lands.

Blessed by the Lord, the ever fecund soil
Was prosperous with surfeit of gold grain,
Yielding a ready increase through the years
To feed the grand and colossean town,
Which shone above it in its lordliness
Like some immense, bewildering star of steel.

Within the triple armor of her walls,
Sodom, impregnable, awaited night,
Arrayed in the sharp dazzle of her lamps,
In countless thousands lighting the large ways;
Waited, while sultry summer's twilight came
To cool its heart of marble with kind dews,
And breathe the perfume of awakening flowers.

Circled by budding leagues of fair parterres,
A hundred holy temples thrust their domes
And miracles of many-pillared grace
High to the stars in grandeur insolent,
Where bizarre figures, fashioned into gods,
Guarded the dizzy steps and jasper stairs
Leading to pyramids and tapering towers,
While on the ample palace roofs, in charm
And luxury prodigious, breathed and bloomed
A world of swaying gardens beautiful.
Here on the avenues, where roses seemed
To grow more plentiful than a forest's weeds,
Stood in a maze of porphyry and gold
The peerless statues of the inviolate gods,
And wondrous idols crushed with lucent gems,
In pillared temples vast, miraculous.
Here brooded Nergal in his awful calm,
Upon his puissant altars, in his hand
The scintillant sword that nations terrified.
Alone, supreme, majestic, he looked down
Upon the attendant throngs of bearded priests,
Stern in the splendors of his scarlet robes,
While in his outstretched hand a human head
Dropped in dull splashes its fast clotting gore,
Staining the lapis steps with ruddy red.

Around him, in the close prophetic gloom,
Were awful shapes of animals and men,
Bewildering images of unknown forms,
Accouplements of monsters and of birds
With shapely maidens and exulting slaves,
Figures of great divinities and powers
Deigning to germinate with earthly flesh,
And sensual minglements of flowers and brutes,
Where loves amorphous charmed the radiant gods,
And where audacious lust stood glorified.

Here rose the reeking altar-grees of Bel,
And Yem, the king of the exalted gods,
And Bar, the hero of all heroes, stood
In lustrous bronze beside all potent Nin,
With Bita, king of oceans and of fish,
And Anu, holier than the holy stars.

Here reigned the great and terror-dealing Beltis,
The pure, impeccable and beauteous goddess,
And in the perfumed temple's gloom before her
Maidens would swoon in holy prostitution,
Adoring her fecundity and beauty,
Filling the temple with their sighs of rapture,
Low and delicious like the doves' soft cooing.
Here would they wait to lure the idle passer,
Tempting his glance by bare and fragrant bosoms,
Calling upon their goddess and Sheruba,
Divine Ishtar, and lily-limbed Anuta,
To make their flesh a love-light and a wonder,
To win the timorous stranger and the passer.
Their languid limbs were radiant with jewels;
Their thighs were smeared with warm, voluptuous ointments,
And tiars of gold coin amid their tresses
Shone in the gloom like the fond eyes of angels,
They smiled and languished in their lustful dreaming,
Watching their eyes flash in their copper mirrors,
Beautiful, redolent, supple-limbed and tempting,
Carelessly tapping on their noisy tabrets,
Screened by the goddess in the temple's arches,
Yearning for some sweet stripling of the city,
Or the grave, palm-oiled, warriors of Gomorrah,
And, as they toyed with gold and silver ouches,
Prayed unto Hea to relieve and send them
Some dainty zonah, some delicious zonah,
Who, lacking lovers, would with joy caress them,
Ay, love them sweetlier for lacking lovers.

Within Ashurs' colossal almug temple,
Around the holy altar sacrificial,
Drowsy with cassia fumes and stringent spices,
The heady nekoth, the sweet smell of heaven,
Lying and dozing with the sacred serpents,
Listening to eunuchs idly thrum the viol,
Nodding their chins upon their tuneless nebels,
Linger the chosen lovers of the altar,
Perfumed and supple, in a gaudy raiment,
Oiled to the beard and like fresh lilies fragrant,
Drenched with basam, and cinnamon's sweet juices,
Praying to Anu to secure them lovers;
Lovers who would reward their warm caresses
With costly gifts of onycha and ointment;
Lovers who lavish galbanum in plenty,
When cloyed and satisfied with their embracing,
And they to all will amorously pander,
Being of loves mysterious and strange passions
The slaves, the chosen and the perfect masters.

There in the inner gloom, like a strong wind,
Arose the high priest's grave, majestic song: