The Poetry Corner

Baktschi Serai

By Adam Bernard Mickiewicz

In ruin are the spacious, splendid halls With frozen forest of white columns where The Tartar Khan his palace builded fair, Where loneliest the shrilling cricket calls. The ivy blackens over shining walls Enscribing in gigantic letters there Some curse Belshazzar-like: Beware! Beware!-- Then black as crepe from crested columns falls. Within the burnished banquet room there sings The fountain of the harem pure and clear, Just as of old it sang in twilights drear. But whither love and fame speed--on what wings? When all things else must perish these endure! Yet both are gone! The fountain ripples pure.