BABYLON

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1880

I CLIMBED the cliff; I crossed the rock; I trod the desert old; I passed the wild Arabian's tent, The Syrian shepherd's fold. Behind me far were haunts of men, Stretched into distant gray; While spread before me, lone and wide, The plain of Shinar lay,—

The boundless plain of Linjar, Where long, long ages back, Abdallah read the silent stars, And wrote their mystic track— Where art thou, gem of the rich earth, City of far renown, The glory of the proud Chaldee, The green earth's ancient crown?

Where lies the lake, that, gleaming wide, Gave back thy hundred towers? Where are thy gardens of delight, Thy cedar-shaded bowers? And where, Oh! where rolls rapidly Thine ever flashing river, Past marble gates, and columned towers, Guarding thy walls forever?

There is no voice of gladness here, No breath of song floats by; I hearken, but the moaning breeze Is all that makes reply. Solemn and lone the silent marsh Spreads endlessly around, And shapeless are the ruined heaps That strew the broken ground.

Sadly above huge outlines dim, Sighs the lone willow bough, The last, last voice of Babylon, Its on'y music now. Son of Mandane, by whose hand The doomed city fell, The swift feet of whose soldiery Climbed tower and citadel;

Thou foundest revelry and mirth, Thou foundest dance and song, Thou foundest many a banquet fair, And many a joyous throng; Like the death-angel camest thou, When men were care-bereft; And is this lone, waste wilderness The total thou hast left?

Oh! glorious were her palaces, And shrines of fretted gold; There rose the fane of Merodach, The house of Belus old; And busy life was in her streets, Where countless nations thronged; Light footsteps glided through her homes, And mirth to her belonged.

But prophet voices murmured, E'en in her festal halls, And angel fingers wrote her doom, Upon the palace walls. At midnight came the Persian, Mingling amid the crowd; He heeded not the beautiful, He stayed not for the proud.

False was her fated river, Heedless her gods of stone; He entered at her open gates; He passed—and she was gone. Her place on earth abideth not, Memorial she hath none; Darkness and ruin thou mayest find, But never Babylon.—Unknown.