IV.

No longer Nature's thrall, Man builds the city wall That shall withstand her league of levelling storms; He builds tremendous tombs

Where, hid in hoarded glooms, His dead defy corruption with her worms: High towers he rears and bulks of glowing stone, Where the king rules upon a golden throne.

Creature of hopes and fears, Of mirth and many tears, He makes himself a thousand costly altars, Whence smoke of sacrifice,

Fragrant with myrrh and spice, Ascends to heaven as the flame leaps and falters; Where, like a king above the Cloud control, God sits enthroned and rules Man's subject soul.

Yet grievous here below And manifold Man's woe; Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters, His hand he shall not stay

That bids him sack and slay And turn the waving fields to fields of slaughters; And, as he reaps War's harvest grim and gory, Commits a thousand crimes and calls it glory.

Vast empires fall and rise, As when in sunset skies The monumental clouds lift flashing towers With turrets, spires, and bars

Lit by confederate stars Till the bright rack dissolves in flying showers: Kingdoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day, Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away.

In golden Morning lands The blazing crowns change hands, From mystic Ind to fleshly Babylon, Assyria, Palestine

Armed with her book divine, Dread Persia whose fleet chariots charged and won Pale Continents where prostrate monarchs kneel Before the flash of her resistless steel.

As one by one they start With proudly beating heart Fast in the furious, fierce-contested race, Where neck to neck they strain

Deliriously to gain The winning post of power, the meed of praise; Some drop behind, fall, or are trampled down While the proud victor grasps the laurel crown.

Not only great campaigns Shall glorify their reigns, But high-towered cities wondrous to behold, With gardens poised in air

Like bowers of Eden fair, With brazen gates and shrines of beaten gold, And Palace courts whose constellated lights Shine on black slaves and cringing satellites.

Eclipsing with her fate Each power and rival state With her unnumbered stretch of generations, A sand-surrounded isle

Fed by the bounteous Nile, Egypt confronts Sahara — sphinx of nations; Taught by the floods that make or mar her shore, She scans the stars and hoards mysterious lore.

Hers are imperial halls With strangely scriptured walls And long perspectives of memorial places, Where the hushed daylight glows

On mute colossal rows Of clawed wild beasts featured with female faces, And realmless kings inane whose stony eyes Have watched the hour-glass of the centuries.

There in the rainless sands The toil of captive hands, That aye must do as their taskmaster bids, Through years of dusty days

Brick by slow brick shall raise The incarnate pride of kings — the Pyramids — Linked with some name synonymous with slaughter Time has effaced like a name writ in water.

For ever with fateful shocks, Roar as of hurtling rocks, Start fresh embattled hosts with flags unfurled, To meet on battle-fields

With clash of spears and shields, Widowing the world of men to win the world: The hissing air grows dark with iron rain, And groans the earth beneath her sheaves of slain.

Triumphant o'er them all, See crowns and sceptres fall Before the arms of iron-soldered legions; As Capitolian Rome

Across the salt sea foam Orders her Caesars to remotest regions: From silver Spain and Albion's clouded seas To the fair shrines and marble mines of Greece.

Pallas unmatched in war, To her triumphal car Rome chains fallen despots and discrowned queens With many a rampant beast,

Birds from the gorgeous East, And wool-haired Nubians torn from tropic scenes; There huge barbarians from Druidic woods Tower ominous o'er the humming multitudes;

For still untamed and free In loathed captivity, Their spirits bend not to the conqueror's yoke, Though for a Roman sight

They must in mimic fight Give wounds in play and deal Death's mortal stroke, While round the arena rings the fierce applause Voluptuous, as their bubbling life-blood flows

In streams of purple rain From hecatombs of slain Saluting Caesar still with failing breath, But in their dying souls

Undying hate, which rolls From land to land the avalanche of Death, That, gathering volume as it sweeps along, Pours down the Alps throng on unnumbered throng.

From northern hills and plains Storm-lashed by driving rains, From moorland wastes and depths of desolate wood, From many an icebound shore,

The human torrents pour, Horde following upon horde as flood on flood, Avengers of the slain they come, they come, And break in thunder on the walls of Rome.

A trembling people waits As, surging through its gates, Break the fierce Goths with trumpet-blasts of doom; And many a glorious shrine

Begins to flare and shine, And many a palace flames up through the gloom, Kindled like torches by relentless wrath To light the Spoiler on destruction's path.

Yea, with Rome's ravished walls, The old world tottering falls And crumbles into ruin wide and vast; The Empire seems to rock

As with an earthquake's shock, And vassal provinces look on aghast; As realms are split and nation rent from nation, The globe seems drifting to annihilation.