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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=360768" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Burden of Nineveh</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">In our Museum galleries<br>To-day I lingered o'er the prize<br>Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—<br>Her Art for ever in fresh wise<br>From hour to hour rejoicing me.<br>Sighing I turned at last to win<br>Once more the London dirt and din;<br>And as I made the swing-door spin<br>And issued, they were hoisting in<br>A wingèd beast from Nineveh.<br>A human face the creature wore,<br>And hoofs behind and hoofs before,<br>And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.<br>'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,<br>A dead disbowelled mystery:<br>The mummy of a buried faith<br>Stark from the charnel without scathe,<br>Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—<br>Such fossil cerements as might swathe<br>The very corpse of Nineveh.<br>The print of its first rush-wrapping,<br>Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.<br>What song did the brown maidens sing,<br>From purple mouths alternating,<br>When that was woven languidly?<br>What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,<br>What songs has the strange image heard?<br>In what blind vigil stood interr'd<br>For ages, till an English word<br>Broke silence first at Nineveh?<br>Oh when upon each sculptured court,<br>Where even the wind might not resort,—<br>O'er which Time passed, of like import<br>With the wild Arab boys at sport,—<br>A living face looked in to see:—<br>Oh seemed it not—the spell once broke—<br>As though the carven warriors woke,<br>As though the shaft the string forsook,<br>The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,<br>And there was life in Nineveh?<br>On London stones our sun anew<br>The beast's recovered shadow threw.<br>(No shade that plague of darkness knew,<br>No light, no shade, while older grew<br>By ages the old earth and sea.)<br>Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown<br>Such proof to make thy godhead known?<br>From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;<br>And still thy shadow is thine own,<br>Even as of yore in Nineveh.<br>That day whereof we keep record,<br>When near thy city-gates the Lord<br>Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,<br>This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd<br>Even thus this shadow that I see.<br>This shadow has been shed the same<br>From sun and moon,—from lamps which came<br>For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,<br>The last, while smouldered to a name<br>Sardanapalus' Nineveh.<br>Within thy shadow, haply, once<br>Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons<br>Smote him between the altar-stones:<br>Or pale Semiramis her zones<br>Of gold, her incense brought to thee,<br>In love for grace, in war for aid: . . .<br>Ay, and who else? . . . till 'neath thy shade<br>Within his trenches newly made<br>Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—<br>Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.<br>Now, thou poor god, within this hall<br>Where the blank windows blind the wall<br>From pedestal to pedestal,<br>The kind of light shall on thee fall<br>Which London takes the day to be:<br>While school-foundations in the act<br>Of holiday, three files compact,<br>Shall learn to view thee as a fact<br>Connected with that zealous tract:<br>“ROME,—Babylon and Nineveh.”<br>Deemed they of this, those worshippers,<br>When, in some mythic chain of verse<br>Which man shall not again rehearse,<br>The faces of thy ministers<br>Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?<br>Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god<br>Before whose feet men knelt unshod<br>Deem that in this unblest abode<br>Another scarce more unknown god<br>Should house with him, from Nineveh?<br>Ah! in what quarries lay the stone<br>From which this pillared pile has grown,<br>Unto man's need how long unknown,<br>Since those thy temples, court and cone,<br>Rose far in desert history?<br>Ah! what is here that does not lie<br>All strange to thine awakened eye?<br>Ah! what is here can testify<br>(Save that dumb presence of the sky)<br>Unto thy day and Nineveh?<br>Why, of those mummies in the room<br>Above, there might indeed have come<br>One out of Egypt to thy home,<br>An alien. Nay, but were not some<br>Of these thine own “antiquity”?<br>And now,—they and their gods and thou<br>All relics here together,—now<br>Whose profit? whether bull or cow,<br>Isis or Ibis, who or how,<br>Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?<br>The consecrated metals found,<br>And ivory tablets, underground,<br>Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd.<br>When air and daylight filled the mound,<br>Fell into dust immediately.<br>And even as these, the images<br>Of awe and worship,—even as these,—<br>So, smitten with the sun's increase,<br>Her glory mouldered and did cease<br>From immemorial Nineveh.<br>The day her builders made their halt,<br>Those cities of the lake of salt<br>Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,<br>Made proud with pillars of basalt,<br>With sardonyx and porphyry.<br>The day that Jonah bore abroad<br>To Nineveh the voice of God,<br>A brackish lake lay in his road,<br>Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,<br>As then in royal Nineveh.<br>The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,<br>Showed all the kingdoms at a glance<br>To Him before whose countenance<br>The years recede, the years advance,<br>And said, Fall down and worship me:—<br>'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,<br>Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,<br>Where to the wind the Salt Pools shook,<br>And in those tracts, of life forsook,<br>That knew thee not, O Nineveh!<br>Delicate harlot! On thy throne<br>Thou with a world beneath thee prone<br>In state for ages sat'st alone;<br>And needs were years and lustres flown<br>Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:<br>Whom even thy victor foes must bring,<br>Still royal, among maids that sing<br>As with doves' voices, taboring<br>Upon their breasts, unto the King,—<br>A kingly conquest, Nineveh!<br>. . . Here woke my thought. The wind's slow sway<br>Had waxed; and like the human play<br>Of scorn that smiling spreads away,<br>The sunshine shivered off the day:<br>The callous wind, it seemed to me,<br>Swept up the shadow from the ground:<br>And pale as whom the Fates astound,<br>The god forlorn stood winged and crown'd:<br>Within I knew the cry lay bound<br>Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.<br>And as I turned, my sense half shut<br>Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut<br>Go past as marshalled to the strut<br>Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.<br>It seemed in one same pageantry<br>They followed forms which had been erst;<br>To pass, till on my sight should burst<br>That future of the best or worst<br>When some may question which was first,<br>Of London or of Nineveh.<br>For as that Bull-god once did stand<br>And watched the burial-clouds of sand,<br>Till these at last without a hand<br>Rose o'er his eyes, another land,<br>And blinded him with destiny:—<br>So may he stand again; till now,<br>In ships of unknown sail and prow,<br>Some tribe of the Australian plough<br>Bear him afar,—a relic now<br>Of London, not of Nineveh!<br>Or it may chance indeed that when<br>Man's age is hoary among men,—<br>His centuries threescore and ten,—<br>His furthest childhood shall seem then<br>More clear than later times may be:<br>Who, finding in this desert place<br>This form, shall hold us for some race<br>That walked not in Christ's lowly ways,<br>But bowed its pride and vowed its praise<br>Unto the God of Nineveh.<br>The smile rose first,—anon drew nigh<br>The thought: . . . Those heavy wings spread high,<br>So sure of flight, which do not fly;<br>That set gaze never on the sky;<br>Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;<br>Its crown, a brow-contracting load;<br>Its planted feet which trust the sod: . . .<br>(So grew the image as I trod<br>O Nineveh, was this thy God,—<br>Thine also, mighty Nineveh?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Dante+Gabriel+Rossetti">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=360768" data-title="The Burden of Nineveh de Dante Gabriel Rossetti" data-description="In our Museum galleries
To-day I lingered o'er the prize
Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
Her Art for ever in fresh wise
From hour to hour rejoicing me.
Sighing I turned at last to win
Once more the London dirt and din;
And as I made the ..."></div>
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