Read "The Tower of Babel" by Annie Fellows Johnston online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
ONCE, many centuries ago, / Men tried to build a tower so high / That rising upward, round on round, / Its pinnacle should reach the sky.
And as they toiled and built and dreamed and planned, / What hopes went upward with the rising stone! / That daring feet ere long should mount and stand / Upon the golden stairway to the throne.
And then a dire confusion fell / Upon the workers, building there.
Men called and shouted each to each / With strange, uncomprehended speech, / And what it meant no one could tell; / So they left building in despair.
Yet in their hearts still lived the hope that they / Might scale the ramparts of the sky some day.
Sometimes our souls expand and glow / With holy visions bright and pure; / But when from these deep vales below / We proudly try to climb and reach / With clumsy masonry of speech, / And rounds of rhyme that shall endure, / That sky-born thing, that heavenly theme, / Touched only by a prayer or dream, / A swift confusion o'er us flies, / And sudden chills our hands benumb.
Our minds are blurred, our tongues are dumb, / The vision fades away and dies.
Yet still we dream that song some day may be / Rung through the arches of Eternity.