Who knows where Babylon’s forgotten kings
Now keep their state?
Laid to their rest ’neath purple coverings,
They meet the common fate.
No traces that abide
Of all the Christs who bled upon the Cross
Ere Jesus died,
And by the Ganges sought the gain of loss:
Behold their priestly mantle’s dye
Has faded, and their day gone by.
The witching girls with eyes so crystal-clear
And honeyed tresses bright,
Full many a fool’s delight
And his heart’s all:
These with the snows of yester-year
Not Villon’s cry shall wake to light--
Asleep beyond recall.
The tables of the law are broken;
The flocks are feeding on the grass that grows
About each sculptured token
Of ancient empire, and the wild wind blows
Yet, though the spell of death and ruin lord
The earth, above all mortal woes
Deathless triumphant sounds the poet’s word,
Clothed with thought’s flame, and through the storm-fraught night,
Blazes like a mighty sword
Leaping to the fight.
Through the clang of battle, and the crash
Of worlds that to destruction fall,
Song rings out like silver trumpets’ call,
Or, heard through all,
Harmonious still, great chords consenting clash.
Never is melody silent on earth;
Faint, far-away, but forever rings the sound of its mirth,
Not even the sun is eternal, but immortal, O Homer, thy birth!
And still the listening years
Repeat her lyric name,
Who wove song’s deathless garland from her tears
And from her shame.
And raised by music’s might
--High walls in battlemented line--
A magic city dawns before my sight:
Golden temples rear their haughty heads on high.
Domes like new suns blazing seem to span the sky.
I enter in, and straying stand at length
Amazed before a vast cathedral’s door.
Immense it rises there, in conscious strength
That many a tempest bore.
On the threshold swift I pause:
Sound of ghostly footsteps awes
My eager feet that would an entrance win,
Bids me kneel and murmur low
Prayers of reverence, as I know
What holy thoughts, what wisdom dwell therein.
This is the home of high Teutonic speech
Where beauty’s sacred fire forever glows.
Upon the Edda’s broad foundation rose
The soaring columns vaulted each to each,
And Goethe, Shakespeare, Ibsen reach
Their spans cross the hall:
And over all
A dome that holds the light,
The Master-Man, whose message mystical
Bade us be bold and laugh and seize delight,
Before he vanished into endless night
At Zarathustra’s call!
Of song is made the painted windows’ sheen,
The lustre of the lamps,
The tapestries shot with gold:
On each his own design some singer stamps,
The very stones have voices, that proclaim
The Magic City and uphold
Her deathless fame.
The Holy of Holies is this place:
Some hanging that the wall may grace
To weave with care,
Or with the smoking censer pace,
Or do least service in that blessed throng,
Is to claim kinship with God’s saints and wear
The martyr’s crown of song.