As towered Babylon, stood in the dreamy sand--
Older a million years: Babel was builded on
That broken city's tears; dust of her crumbled past
Rose from the rapid wheels of Babel's charioteers
In whorled clouds above those shining thoroughfares
Where Babel's millions tread on her unheeding dead.
Forth from an eastern gate where the lips of Asia wait
Parch'd with an ancient thirst that no æons can abate,
Passed I, predestinate, to a thorn'd desert's drought,
Where the rivers of the south, flowing in a cloudy spate,