Poems (David)/Persepolis
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PERSEPOLIS.
PERSEPOLIS! how great thy name!
The monument of Man so vain,
The dwelling place of Darius' seed
Abandoned to the lonely weed!
Thy marble steps now mouldering lie,
Thy temples laid bare to the sky!
In them the deadly adders rest,
The storks and bitterns form their nest!
The cot, the palace, sunk alike
In sad oblivion's endless night.
Each seems with warning voice to cry,
Unto the stranger passing by—
"Stranger in this my fallen state,
Read here in me a kingdom's fate!"
The monument of Man so vain,
The dwelling place of Darius' seed
Abandoned to the lonely weed!
Thy marble steps now mouldering lie,
Thy temples laid bare to the sky!
In them the deadly adders rest,
The storks and bitterns form their nest!
The cot, the palace, sunk alike
In sad oblivion's endless night.
Each seems with warning voice to cry,
Unto the stranger passing by—
"Stranger in this my fallen state,
Read here in me a kingdom's fate!"