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| BABYLON has fallen! Aye; but Babylon endures | |
| Wherever human folly shines or human folly lures; | |
| Where lovers lingering walk beside, and happy children play, | |
| Is Babylon! Babylon! for ever and for ay. | |
| The plan is rudely fashioned, the dream is unfulfilled, | 5 |
| Yet all is in the archetype if but a builder willed; | |
| And Babylon is calling us, the microcosm of men, | |
| To range her walls in harmony and lift her spires again; | |
| The sternest walls, the proudest spires, that ever sun shone on, | |
| Halting a space his burning race to gaze on Babylon. | 10 |
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| Babylon has fallen! Aye; but Babylon shall stand: | |
| The mantle of her majesty is over sea and land. | |
| Hers is the name of challenge flung, a watchword in the fight | |
| To grapple grim eternities and gain the old delight; | |
| And in the word the dream is hid, and in the dream the deed, | 15 |
| And in the deed the mastery for those who dare to lead. | |
| Surely her day shall come again, surely her breed be born | |
| To urge the hope of humankind and scale the peaks of morn— | |
| To fight as they who fought till death their bloody field upon, | |
| And kept the gate against the Fate frowning on Babylon. | 20 |
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| Babylon has fallen! Nay; for Babylon falls never; | |
| Her seat is in the aspiring brain, in nerves that leap and quiver: | |
| Upon her towers of ancient dream Prometheus is throned, | |
| And still his ravished spark is flung wherever manhood’s owned. | |
| All vices, crimes, and mutinies were Babylon’s: and then | 25 |
| All honours, prides, and ecstasies—for in her streets were Men; | |
| And Man by Man must grow apace, and Man by Man must thrive, | |
| And Man from Man must snatch the torch that lights the race alive: | |
| Yea, here and now her citizens, as in the years far gone, | |
| Stone by stone, and joy with moan, upbuild Babylon. | 30 |
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