Babylon—here the queen's gardens climbed high,
Painting their flowers on the blue of the sky:
"I SAW TALL DERRICKS BY THE HUNDRED RISE."
This is where sinners, one asinine hour,
Thought they could travel to Heaven by tower.
(How like some sinners to-day, whose desires
Mount by the way of their greed-builded spires!)
Troy—of rare riches and valor possessed,
Ruined fore'er by one beautiful guest—
(Here many Helens, though less of renown,
Do for some men what she did for a town!)
Wondrous Palmyra, whose island of green,
'Mid the bleak sand, reared the beautiful queen
(Sweet-faced Zenobia, peerless
Proud in her virtue, and fearless)
In this metropolis, virtuously grand,
Many a queen is a joy to the land!
Tyre—the huge pillars that groaned under thee,
Rest in the depths of a desolate sea;
Long may it be ere the spray's salted showers
Foam o'er the walls of this city of ours!
Mound-men's vast cities, whose graves we accost,
Even your names are in ruins—and lost.
What if, some time when this nation is nought,
Vainly our names in our graves should be sought!