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