"MENE."
Turn ye and look on ancient Babylon,—
The glory of Chaldea's excellence.
—Where is thy golden throne,—thou queen of earth?
Thy heaven-defying walls,—thy molten gates,
Thy towering terraces of trees and flowers,
Thy river-god Euphrates,—thy gay priests,
Effeminate kings,—astrologers with eyes
Seal'd to the stars?—Methinks, even now I trace
What struck thy prince, amid his revels, pale.
The mystic fingers of a sever'd hand
Inscribing Mene on thy mouldering dust.
—Ask ye for Tyre,—for populous Nineveh,
For temple-crown'd Jerusalem,—for Thebes
The hundred-gated,—or for Carthage proud?—
Go!—ask the winnowing winds that waste the chaff
Of human glory.—Ask ye who engraved
Mene upon Pompeii's radiant halls,
When dust and ashes quench'd their revelry?—
The hand that graves it on thy own frail frame,
Thy palaces of pleasure,—domes of pride,—
And bowers of hope.—The pen of judging Heaven
Writes "Mene—Mene—Tekel"—on all joys
Of this deluding world.—That world herself
So blind and blinding,—she shall read her doom
Upon the blacken'd sky,—by the last ray
Of the pale,—fainting sun,—and smit with pangs
Like him of Babylon,—shall tottering fall
To rise no more.—What then shall be their lot,
Who sought no wealth but hers,—nor tasted joy
Save in her smile?