Westward the pillars slender
Of Hercules it lay--
The land whose pride and splendor
Once burned beneath the day.
No more the sun shall warm it;
No more man's footfall be
In Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
Above her fanes of glory
The iron vessel steamed,--
The city shrined in story
Such as no poet dreamed.
I knew the marble towers,
The cold, white majesty
Of Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
An hundred fathoms to mine eyes,
Through molten blue and green,
The sun that toward in the skies
Drew up the deeps serene.
Snow-like the roofs and temples,
The streets with pearls strewn free
In Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
Silence in dead Atlantis bode;
Quenched lay her pride and wealth;
The scarlet sea-flags streamed and flowed;
The serpents slipped in stealth.
Pale blooms and shells bedecked her floor,
And the starred anemone
In Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
An hundred fathoms to my ken
Rose white with closen eyes
A face--so to the sight of men
The lost, loved women rise.
It smiled and shone and brightened
With strange, wild witchery
From Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
Deep down my heart lay hidden
Where coral-forests bloomed;
Deep down my arms were bidden
To clasp the city doomed.
There, twice a thousand years agone,
O Love, I dwelt with thee
In Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
Beneath the sunbeams and the ships,
One hundred fathoms deep,
Upon thy sea-cold eyes and lips
Roll tides of endless sleep.
Would that we twain were lying,
With thy hair flung over me,
In Atlantis, old Atlantis,
Atlantis in the sea.
