The Sundial - The Wood Lyrics

They cut it down, and where the pitch-black aisles
Of forest night had hid eternal things
They scaled the sky with towers and marble piles
To make a city for their revellings

White and amazing to the lands around
That wondrous wealth of domes and turrets rose
Crystal and ivory, sublimely crowned
With pinnacles that bore unmelting snows

And through its halls the pipe and sistrum rang
While wine and riot brought their scarlet stains
Never a voice of elder marvels sang
Nor any eye called up the hills and plains

Thus down the years, till on one purple night
A drunken minstrel in his careless verse
Spoke the vile words that should not see the light
And stirred the shadows of an ancient curse

Forests may fall, but not the dusk they shield
So on the spot where that proud city stood
The shuddering dawn no single stone revealed
But fled the blackness of a primal wood