A VOICELESS shaking of the air …
Then a low shuddering of sound
Vibrant, thunderous, like the profound
Pulsation of great wings. O rare,
In the high-vaulted transept's gloom
Wakes sonant echoing, and the deep
Tone-breakers gather ponderously and leap
From beam to beam, like sullen boom
Of lazy summer thunder. See!
On the bare rock-rimmed Scythian plain
The swarthy shepherd Tamburlaine …
Swells the great organ suddenly
Steady, glorious, like a galleon flinging
Leeward the roaring foam—and swift
The soaring organ-voices lift
Terrible as a Crusade singing!
“Tamburlaine! Tamburlaine! Tamburlaine!
Doom of the world's Emperors!
O living Pestilence of Wars,
Thou art God's Scourge, O Tamburlaine!”
Loosed are the shrill, the high pipes' throats,
Joyful the bright, gold trumpets' blare,
Brazen his monstrous armies flare,
Ruthless his red gonfalon floats!
War! Full-throated, the shattering
Great pipes tumultuous give tongue—
Each chord a butchered city sung,
And every note a slaughtered king.
The flame of cities has scorched God's face,
Murder has made a marsh of the world
Purged with destruction—and down-hurled
Rot the world's tyrants … Lo! the bass:
“God's lash is bloody, Tamburlaine.
Break, heart die,—Emperor of Kings,
Tool of divine and awful things
Too near to godhead, Tamburlaine!”
Falls like a sea-wind at sundown
The full-toned sonorous battle-chant,
Yet the sound-surf reverberant
Rolls the dim-springing nave adown
Rolls thunderous—subsiding—low—
In a burnt, treeless land where loom
The world's high mountains, lies a tomb—
Vibrant the shuddering tremolo—
A tomb half hid with drifting sand,
Nameless in Samarkand …