Just twenty years to-day!
But are you not that flower
That in the lotus valley grew
And only Theban maidens knew
The heaven-secluded bower?

Just twenty years to-day!
And yet I seem to hear
In gilded courts of Babylon,
In Heliopolis and On,
A thousand voices clear.

Acclaim your cavalcade
That down the Tigris veers;
With young Semiramis beside,
You stately dromedaries ride
Down avenues of years.

Palmyra's jewelled light
Shone o'er your desert roads;
Atlantis in her coral arms
Held you, a child of many charms,
In her wave-swept abodes.

Dear dream-child of the past,
Joy of the years that lay
Their sleeping forms beneath the strife,
Deep-buried in the crypts of life,
Your twenty years to-day.

Are myriads of years;
Your lovelier life to mould,
The ages have their largess brought
Of glorious deed and lofty thought —
Ah, you are very old.

And you will pour the urge
Of all that earlier strife
With its incalculable cost,
Its victories won, its battles lost,
Into the stream of life.