Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.
Benina to Belshazzar
By Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868)I
The exultation of unfettered earth!
From east to west they lift their trampled necks,
The indignant nations: earth breaks out in scorn;
The valleys dance and sing; the mountains shake
Their cedar-crownéd tops! The strangers crowd
To gaze upon the howling wilderness,
Where stood the Queen of Nations. Lo! even now,
Lazy Euphrates rolls his sullen waves
Through wastes, and but reflects his own thick reeds.
I hear the bitterns shriek, the dragons cry;
I see the shadow of the midnight owl
Gliding where now are laughter-echoing palaces!
O’er the vast plain I see the mighty tombs
Of kings, in sad and broken whiteness gleam
Beneath the o’ergrown cypress,—but no tomb
Bears record, Babylon, of thy last lord;
Even monuments are silent of Belshazzar!