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Title: The Song Of Seven Cities
Author: Rudyard Kipling [
More Titles by Kipling]
I was Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded.
Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute from afar.
Ivory their outposts were--the guardrooms of them
gilded,
And garrisoned with Amazons invincible in war.
All the world went softly when it walked before my
Cities--
Neither King nor Army vexed my peoples at their toil.
Never horse nor chariot irked or overbore my Cities,
Never Mob nor Ruler questioned whence they drew
their spoil.
Banded, mailed and arrogant from sunrise unto sunset,
Singing while they sacked it, they possessed the land
at large.
Yet when men would rob them, they resisted, they
made onset
And pierced the smoke of battle with a thousand-sabred
charge!
So they warred and trafficked only yesterday, my Cities.
To-day there is no mark or mound of where my Cities
stood.
For the River rose at midnight and it washed away my
Cities.
They are evened with Atlantis and the towns before the
Flood.
Rain on rain-gorged channels raised the water-levels
round them,
Freshet backed on freshet swelled and swept their
world from sight,
Till the emboldened floods linked arms and flashing forward
drowned them--
Drowned my Seven Cities and their peoples in one
night!
Low among the alders lie their derelict foundations,
The beams wherein they trusted and the plinths whereon
they built--
My rulers and their treasure and their unborn populations,
Dead, destroyed, aborted, and defiled with mud and
silt!
The Daughters of the Palace whom they cherished in
my Cities,
My silver-tongued Princesses, and the promise of their
May--
Their bridegrooms of the June-tide--all have perished
in my Cities,
With the harsh envenomed virgins that can neither
love nor play.
I was Lord of Cities--I will build anew my Cities,
Seven, set on rocks, above the wrath of any flood.
Nor will I rest from search till I have filled anew my Cities
With peoples undefeated of the dark, enduring blood.
To the sound of trumpets shall their seed restore my Cities.
Wealthy and well-weaponed, that once more may I behold
All the world go softly when it walks before my Cities,
And the horses and the chariots fleeing from them as of old!
[The end]
Rudyard Kipling's poem: Song Of Seven Cities
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