• The The sun waxed fully present. Blue
• And huge, the beast its shadow threw.
• No shade that plague of darkness knew,
• No light, no shade, while older grew
• By ages the old earth and sea.
• How much Heaven's thunder,—how much else
• Man's puny roar,—what cry of shells
• Cleft amid leaguered citadels,
• How many lordships loud with bells,
• 40Heardst thou in secret Nineveh?

• On the grey stones the shape lay scor'd.
• That day when, nigh the gates, the Lord
• Shelter'd h His Jonah with a gourd,
• This sun, (I said) that here present, pour'd
• Even thus this shadow that I see.
• This shadow has been shed the same
• From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
• For worship,—from those days in flame,
• That searched into a shrivelled name
• 50Sardanapalus' Nineveh.

• Within this shadow, haply, knelt once
• Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
• Did smite him twixt the altar-stones;
• Thou peradventure heard his groans
• For his god Nisroch thou may'st be
• Ah! and what men else have asked thine aid
• In years of old, till neath thy shade
• Within those trenches he had made
• Last year the Christian knelt & prayed
• 60In thy reconquered Nineveh.