The Song Of Cian Poem by William H Babcock

Where is the woodland city,
city beside the sea,
White from her ramparts towering,
Queen of the Andred lea?

Lovely her courts were, and woven
With rainbows her palace walls;
The voice of her many fountains
Was the song of the waterfalls.

But ever a threatful shadow
Grew from the eastward haze,
Out of the bath of burning,
Dawn of the evil days.

And ever a wordless horror
Deepened in heart and eye,
Till the noisome breath was o'er her,
And the coils were winding nigh.

Then broke her trance of anguish
Abroad in a mighty wail;
And the forest arms gave echo,
Smiting the monster's mail:


For round the tightening spoiler
A whirl of fury sped;
And still the spears of Britain
Drove at the giant head.

But foes more grim and ghostly
Hid by the idle gate;
And the life within grew weaker
In all but the force of hate.

There came an eve and a morning,
The blackness of Hell between;
By fire-waves broken, and flashes,
And outcry wild and keen.

The sun came up through smoke-clouds;
Never a soul was near.
The sun went down in glory;
But the walls were riven and drear.

Drear was the riven rampart;
The light of her brow had fled;
The maiden city of Andred
Was a city of the dead.

Nor ever morrow shall see her
Blithe as before and fair;
The life that she found so lovely
Is a life she may not share.

A thing of blackness and ruin,
Of lichen and mould and rime,
Of waste where there has been beauty,
She waits till the end of time.

But she, the lordlier, grander,
Who proffered the aiding hand;
So long as the Thames runs seaward,
So long her walls shall stand.

The tempest may break upon her,
The billows may whelm and hide;
But there with the life still in her,
She stands in the ebbing tide.

Nor all of the world's old grandeur
Holds aught to hers akin
In the noontime of her glory-
The town by the reedy lynn.