I saw the ships upon the bay Descending like a dove I saw the night seduce the day And kill him with her love I saw the moving finger write Upon the palace wall And when the day became the night I saw the pillars fall I saw the empire tumble down In ashes at my feet And there reflected in the crown Despair, decline, defeat *** He poured his soul into the mold Which life for him had cast Of doing well what he was told And dwelling on the past He turned his face to Babylon The City of the Gods Whose fountains flow from Acheron And fortunes forged from frauds That rusted gold and rotting iron And cabbages and kings And bold reformers, sweetly sipping From the Pierian spring *** I saw the seventh angel fly About the city wall The trumpets sounded to the sky And bid the ramparts fall I saw the precipice collapse And felt within my rage Perchance false labor, yet perhaps The dawning of an age (But ages are such fickle things With boundaries never clear Like empires vast demarked by springs That shift from year to year) *** Has Jericho not also pride? Feels she not also pain? ?Tis fair to in a brothel hide And empathy disdain The sandstone blocks that form her walls Were chiseled each by hand Her gardens and her marble halls The fairest in the land Is marble greater than the rose Because it never gives? Or lesser, for the flower grows And marble never lives? *** I saw the King again arise To lift the bitter curse And built the arches to the skies As mighty as the first I saw the King again arise And vengeance turn away Who made a salve for blind mens eyes From iron mixed with clay I saw the King again arise And break the bitter chains I saw compassion in his eyes And Jericho remains