Classic Poem

We are the strong archers,
The wonderful marchers,
Who pass through the fields with a rattle of quivers;
The god Bin protects us,
His thunder delects us,
The blood of our foes stains the foam of our rivers!

Their hosts are confounded
By terror unbounded,
When singing we pass in our armor defiant;
At Memphis's battle
We slew them like cattle,
And trod them to dust with the steps of a giant!

Our limbs are athletic,
Our war-cry frenetic,
Our spears by the priests have been made talismanic;
Wherever they glisten,
The foes in fear listen
And fly for the shelter of towns in their panic.

Our king has admired us,
His smile has inspired us,
He hails at Bit-Saggath our prowesses yearly;
He can call us his glorious
Brave soldiers victorious,
And oft at our valor he marvels sincerely.

The insolent Cissions,
By sins and omissions,
Are now his vile slaves, with their children and houses
And oft does he praise us,
And flatter and daze us
By words of great cheer when he sings and carouses.

The Elamites' city
We sacked without pity;
Its gods and its warriors could never withstand us;
Our death-dealing arrows
Were swifter than sparrows,
And Moloch and Merodach deigned to command us.

We are the strong archers,
The wonderful marchers,
Who pass through the fields with a rattle of quivers;
The god Bin protects us,
His thunder delects us,
The blood of our foes stains the foam of our rivers.
Bel-shar-uzzur, as curious as a child,
Entered the gardens where his beasts were fed;
For he was proud of animals and birds,
Loving them more than women and than men.
And slaves walked with him, bearing meat and fruit

To throw unto his pets as he desired.
And there were seventy lions in a pit,
Roaring with hunger, and the monarch laughed
And bade a slave, Assarapac by name,
One who that morn had broken a sontal face,
To leap into the pit.
The craven bowed
His doomed head in dust and shrieked for grace,
But there was none, and as he failed to leap,
Headlong they cast him down amid the brutes,
And ere his body sank upon the sand,
The ravenous monsters gnawned it to red shreds.

This pleased the king, and to his guard he said:
" Have others of my household proved amiss? "
And no one spake, until a soldier said:
" No, mighty king, their duty has been done. "
And this he said because he lived on quails,
On fat and Eschol wine, and he was fond
Of jests and music, and his soul was good,
Because his body was as sleek as oil.

Then did the king throw fruitage to his goats,
And pullets to the foxes in their lairs,
And his great bears he pelted with rich sweets,
Laughing to see them smell the perfumed ground
And lick up gravel with the sticky meats.

The crocodiles that spawned within the Nile,
Gift of Ægyptia's king, he likewise fed
With human flesh, or with a live gazelle,
And many a deer, and to his grunting boars
He threw sweet nuts and acorns with his hand,
Laughing and grinning like a chubby babe.

And one flamingo, one he loved the most,
Was ill, its neck all ruffled by a lynx.
Therefore he placed it in the vipers' hole;
The horned cerastes, a most deadly thing,
Which bit the bird and eyed it growing cold.
Then the great king made visit to his lynx,
His petted lynx, chained to a cage of gold,
And fed from golden dishes; but his wolves
Had brazen dishes only, like the dogs,
And these he fed with many living birds,
Fat quails and bitterns, geese and porcupines,
And he grew merry at the slaughter there,
And bade four slaves to lie upon the soil
Until the elephants his father trained
Approached to stamp their lives out with huge feet,
For this delighted him and all the court.

Then, as he rambled through the green pastures,
He came unto his panthers lithe and fierce,
Who glared upon him with grave golden eyes;
And these he fed with camel flesh and rats,
And jerboa meat and ibexes alive,
While his hyenas snorted for their share;
But they were filthy things and had to starve
Until each second day, when Jews were slain,
And them they could devour like stinking beasts.

Now, as the king was weary and amort,
He bade his slaves tie two fat beavers up
And hurl them in a pit where leopards glared;
And it was done, while from the parapet
He watched the supple monsters fiercely gorge.

Around the brazen porches of the town
Huge obelisks were dragged by panting men,
To grace the lanes and highways of the realm,
And all were slaves captured in Theban sands,
Who still revered their king and loved their gods.
And when their masters, weary of the sun
That smote their faces, lingered in the shade,
Forgetting that their goads were idle, yea,
When the taskmasters loitered near the gates
To purchase water from a gum-girl fair
Or dally with a harlot in the trench,
Then, in their flowing mother-tongue, beloved
And idolized of them, they would repeat
This dolorous appeal with humid eyes