Here now are his own words, rendered literally except in the case of one or two conjunctions and articles,--rendered, too, in the original order of the words, and, as far as it can be determined, in the rhythm of the original. The rhythm is largely uncertain, but some verses--1, 5, 14, 15--are complete in that measure which we found in the Taunt-song against the king of Babylon in ch. xiii.,[112] and nearly every line or clause has the same metrical swing upon it.
_Down! and sit in the dust, O virgin,_ _Daughter of Babel!_ _Sit on the ground, with no throne,_ _Daughter of Khasdîm! For not again shall they call thee_ _Tender and Dainty._ _Take to thee millstones, and grind out the meal,_ _Put back thy veil, strip off the garment,_ _Make bare the leg, wade through the rivers;_ _Bare be thy nakedness, yea, be beholden thy shame!_ _Vengeance I take, and strike treaty with none._
_Our Redeemer! Jehovah of Hosts is His Name,_ _Holy of Israel!_
_Sit thou dumb, and get into darkness,_ _Daughter of Khasdîm!_ _For not again shall they call thee_ _Mistress of Kingdoms._ _I was wroth with My people, profaned Mine inheritance,_ _Gave them to thy hand:_ _Thou didst show them no mercy, on old men thou madest_ _Thy yoke very sore._ _And thou saidst, For ever I shall be mistress,_ _Till thou hast set not these things to thy heart,_ _Nor thought of their issue._
_Therefore now hear this, Voluptuous,_ _Sitting self-confident:_ _Thou, who saith in her heart, "I am: there is none else._ _I shall not sit a widow, nor know want of children."_ _Surely shall come to thee both of these, sudden, the same day,_ _Childlessness, widowhood! To their full come upon thee, spite of the mass of thy spells,_ _Spite of the wealth of thy charms--to the full!_
_And thou wast bold in thine evil; thou saidst,_ _"None doth see me."_ _Thy wisdom and knowledge--they have led thee astray,_ _Till thou hast said in thine heart, "I am: there is none else."_ _Yet there shall come on thee Evil,_ _Thou know'st not to charm it._ _And there shall fall on thee Havoc,_ _Thou canst not avert it._ _And there shall come on thee suddenly,_ _Unawares, Ruin._ _Stand forth, I pray, with thy charms, with the wealth of thy spells--_ _With which thou hast wearied thyself from thy youth up--_ _If so thou be able to profit,_ _If so to strike terror!_ _Thou art sick with the mass of thy counsels:_ _Let them stand up and save thee--_ _Mappers of heaven, Planet-observers, Tellers at new moons--_ _From what must befall thee!_
_Behold, they are grown like the straw!_ _Fire hath consumed them;_ _Nay, they save not their life_ _From the hand of the flame!_ _--'Tis no fuel for warmth,_ _Fire to sit down at!--_ _Thus are they grown to thee, they who did weary thee,_ _Traders of thine from thy youth up;_ _Each as he could pass have they fled;_ _None is thy saviour!_
We, who remember Isaiah's elegies on Egypt and Tyre,[113] shall be most struck here by the absence of all appreciation of greatness or of beauty about Babylon. Even while prophesying for Tyre as certain a judgement as our prophet here predicts for Babylon, Isaiah spoke as if the ruin of so much enterprise and wealth were a desecration, and he promised that the native strength of Tyre, humbled and purified, would rise again to become the handmaid of religion. But our prophet sees no saving virtue whatever in Babylon, and gives her not the slightest promise of a future. There is pity through his scorn: the way in which he speaks of the futility of the mass of Babylonian science; the way in which he speaks of her ignorance, though served by hosts of counsellors; the way in which, after recalling her countless partners in traffic, he describes their headlong flight, and closes with the words, _None is thy saviour_,--all this is most pathetic. But upon none of his lines is there one touch of awe or admiration or regret for the fall of what is great. To him Babylon is wholly false, vain, destitute--as Tyre was not destitute--of native vigour and saving virtue. Babylon is sheer pretence and futility. Therefore his scorn and condemnation are thorough; and mocking laughter breaks from him, now with an almost savage coarseness, as he pictures the dishonour of the virgin who was no virgin--_Bare thy nakedness, yea, be beholden thy shame_; and now in roguish glee, as he interjects about the fire which shall destroy the mass of Babylon's magicians, astrologers and haruspices: _No coal this to warm oneself at, fire to sit down before._ But withal we are not allowed to forget, that it is one of the Tyrant's poor captives, who thus judges and scorns her. How vividly from the midst of his satire does the prisoner's sigh break forth to God:--