THE VAMPIRE CITY.

THE VAMPIRE CITY.
Reginald Wright Kauffman.
432.1

Come with me into Babylon! Here to my woodland seat Over the miles she lures and smiles-the smile of the bitter-sweet; I hear the distant cadence, the siren-song she sings; I smell the incense burning where her great red censer swings.
II
Out of the night she calls me, the night that is her day; I see the gleam of her million lights a thousand miles away; As the roar of a mighty army I hear her pulses beat With the tramp of the restless vandals, the rush of the wearied feet.

III
Ever and ever onward a white procession goes:
Youths with the strength of lions, maids with the breath o. the rose-
Toward her, but never throned on her armored isles;
They give her their lives for homage, but the City only smiles.

IV
They know that her breasts are poison; they know that her lips are lies,
And half revealed is the death concealed in the pools of her occult eyes;
Yet still she is calling ever, and echo is never dumb:
Follow us into Babylon! Mistress of Life, we come!