The Tower

I AM the tower of Belus, — the tower! yes, I!
Under the rifting lines of the gloaming’s tremulant sky,
Under the shifting signs of the ages circling by,
I stand in the might of the mighty, — the tower of Belus, I!
Who are these at my feet, like pigmies, scorched in the sun?
Who, but the petty hordes of a race that has just begun ?
It matters little to me whether prince or Bedouin stand,
Or the lizard creep at my feet, or the jackal up from the sand.
What does the time-bound traveler know of the dim by-gone —
What can he tell of the glory that died with the world’s bright dawn,
More than the son of the desert? the slim, green, creeping things?
The night-owl fast in his crevice? the bat with his ghostly wings?
Each in his own way imagines the past and the yet-to-be;
Each to himself is greatest: equal alike to me!
I am the tower of Belus; ages unnumbered are mine;
Mightier I than the gods who dreamed themselves divine!

Is this the grandest of rivers, that rolled like a king to the sea,
Crying, “I am the great Euphrates! bring all your tithes unto me”?
How the ships with their treasured freight went down to their rocky bed!
Are there ghouls, insatiate still, with grinning mouths to be fed,
That you burst your stony embankments, ravaging meadow and fen,
Making drearier drear desolation, in scorn for the arts of men?
Ah! Babylonia, where, — ah! where is thy fruitful plain
Spreading sea-like unto the ocean its billowy fields of grain ?
Where now is the mighty city secure with its brazen gates
And walls on whose towering fastness the Assyrian warrior waits,
His milk-white steeds in war-gear, his blazoned flags unfurled,
Hurling in grim defiance His challenge out to the world?
Where are the toiling millions who wrought with their cunning skill
Sweet dreams of a fair ideal in forms that were fairer still?
Oh! Babylon’s looms are silent; in silence dead are the plains;
And dead is city and soldier; the tower alone remains.

I am the tower of Belus! I stand in the grasp of fate!
I and the Semitic princess, together we watch and wait,
She for her lover’s coming, I for oblivion’s knell;
Which with the greater longing the heavens alone can tell.
Is there any joy in existence void of hope or of fears,
In painless, slow dissolution through thousands of weary years?
Or rest for the ghost of the maiden that alike in life and in death,
While years into centuries ripen and centuries wane, keeps faith ?
She counts not night nor morning, but each new moon to greet
She cometh with shadowy garments whose subtle perfume sweet,
From balms forever forgotten, floats ever the secret bed
Where her lover, impatient, is sleeping the sleeo of the restless dead.

For had he not said, “ Beloved, come at the mystical hour
When the young moon lightens with silver the shade of the mighty tower”?
Had he not sworn, “ Though I perish! though Belus lie in the dust ” —
And the trust of a loving woman is blind and unending trust.

Three hands were joined at their parting, three voices breathing love’s breath;
The voice of the third was ghostly, its hand was the hand of death:
And the white stone goddess had shivered while the glow of the sunset dyes
Had deepened in one broad blood-streak and blazed in the western skies;
But the maiden, unheeding the omen, hears only her lover’s last oath,
Nor dreams that her life has been purchased with this as he dieth for both;
The grave that is reeking with vengeance no tale of its mystery brings, —
Gods! — he was a Tyrian soldier, she the daughter of kings!
And what but death can be reckoned as price of unequal love,
And what but the vow recorded by direful fates above
Could save the life of the maiden? — the vow that never again
While the tower of mighty Belus o’ershadows the haunts of men
With its ancient and storied grandeur, — ay, more! that never the while
One upright stone shall be standing alight with the young moon’s smile,
Shall body or ghost of the soldier under its shadow wait:
But death is longer than life-time and love is stronger than fate!

There were hope e’en yet for the tower, standing stark and alone,
Had the flames of an altar-fire e’er burned in its heart of stone;
Had the depths of its adamant bosom e’er thrilled with a love or a hate,
Stern destiny’s grip must have slackened, slackened sooner or late.
I am the tower of Belus! Can the story be written, “ I was ” ?
Shall the tide of an ended existence flow back to the primal cause
Which sent it first into being, and records of age sublime
In utter nothingness vanish under the finger of time?
Hist! a jar in the ragged brickwork! it totters, and now is still;
I can feel the sand slow trickling with a cold, unearthly thrill;
Perchance but a stone is falling, — perchance it is death’s last throe, —
Ay! under the young moon’s glitter I catch the roseate glow
Of the maiden’s royal mantle; the clang of a mailèd tread
Tells that the past has canceled its debt which held the dead.
He cometh with step triumphant! he readeth the fateful sign!
The last grim arch is shattered which linked their lot with mine.

Ah, iate, to the last relentless! thy vassal allegiance owns —
Go back to your cities, O stranger! write, “ Belus, a heap of stones.”