II. Woe for the land of Asshur! she who nursed The world's forefathers in her golden plains, And cradled by her mighty streams the first Primeval race of heroes! What remains Of all her trophies and colossal fanes? Stern, shapeless heaps of ruin, mouldering slow Beneath the fiery sun and torrent rains:— Wild heedless hordes about her come and go:An unloved spectacle of unlamented woe. III. Woe for the land of Asshur! Greece hath bow'd Her head beneath the chariot-wheels of Time; But sorrow, like a distant mountain-cloud, Hath hung its lucid veil above her clime, And only made her virtues more sublime. All centuries have wept her fall, and sung Her greatness and her grief in loftiest rhyme; And, lingering still her haunted fanes among, Repictured, from her age, her loveliness when young. Salem, her former captive, lies in gloom; And Zion, twice a widow, mourns and sighs, And lingers, spectre-like, beside the tomb Of her first bridal blessedness and bloom. She mourns, but mourns in hope; for God hath spoken The mystic number of her years of doom; She waits the beacon-light, the Gospel token, When stanch'd shall be her wounds, and all her chains be broken. V. But woe for thee, O Asshur! Few bemoan Thy giant desolations, void and vast; No beauty smiles on thy sepulchral stone. The solitary stranger stands aghast At thee, but weeps not; and the fitful blast Sighs in thy palaces. Nor canst thou borrow Far hopes to cheer the present and the past; No dawn shall glimmer on thy night of sorrow, Its silence and its sadness hath no bright to-morrow. VI. What though above thy solitudes the Spring Thy wastes with flowers of scarlet and of blue, To one who knew thee in thy prime it seems A sad heart's laughter, to itself untrue; A captive's reverie, - a widow's dreams, The bubbles breaking fast on dark and troubled streams. VII. Where are thy frowning towers and scornful walls, And spacious parks, by hanging gardens spann'd? Where are thy regal palaces, whose halls Of sculptured alabaster proudly stand, The envy and the fame of every land, Dyed purple and vermilion; echoing With bursts of song, by gales of fragrance fann'd; Enrich'd with every great and gorgeous thing, Meet dwelling-place for thee, supreme Assyrian King? VIII. Where is thy stern array of warrior sons, The peerless maidens of Chaldea's bloom, – The laughter of her myriad little ones; The voice of merchandise, the mingled hum Of citizens, and pilgrims who have come From far to view her greatness; the low sighs Of love, the strains of music never dumb, — The banquetings beneath her azure skies, Or long luxurious dance of torch-light revelries? IX. Where is the idol faith that once was hers, The victims on her altars wont to bleed? Her temples, throng'd with prostrate worshippers, And guarded by that winged-lion breedThe awful symbols of a perish'd creed, Whose forms of might their portals still defend; Whose wings betoken omnipresent speed; And brows of lofty human mould portend The knowledge of the gods and wisdom without end? Oh, weep for Nineveh! X. -the scorn or pity, From age to age, of every passer by. "Is this," they ask,1 "the glad, rejoicing city, Who said, 'I am, and none beside me?' Why Great Nineveh is fallen! Transitory As slopes a meteor through the midnight sky;- XI. Though gorgeous fictions have been pass'd along The half-incredulous ages down to this, What boots it to relate, in idle song, How Ninus and divine Semiramis 2 First founded yonder vast metropolis; And left a lineage of kings, whose names Sardanapalus lit his country's funeral flames? 1 "This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desola- Zeph. ii. 15. tion." 2 See Dictionary of Biography, under Ninus. |