… Thine to raise a dirge over the princes of Israel:

Prince, that mother of thine was a lioness indeed; where lions haunt, she made her lair, among their whelps nursed her brood.✻

One cub she reared that grew to lion’s estate, learned to bring down his prey, to eat men;

the neighbours✻ heard of it, caught him, not scatheless, in their pit, and carried him off in chains to Egypt.

Baulked of her hopes, she reared another, till it was a grown lion.

This one, in turn, took his ease like a lion among the rest; learned to bring down prey, eat men,

of women make widows, of cities a desert; dispeopled a whole land with his roaring.

At that, folk came from far and near✻ with nets to snare him, caught him in their cruel toils and caged him.

This one they led off in chains to the king of Babylon; in Babylon he remained a prisoner, and his voice was heard on the hill-sides of Israel no more.

Mother of that royal stock! Vine planted by the water-side, and in that neighbourhood leafy and fruitful both, was never so fertile.

Here was a vine could yield sturdy boughs, sceptres for kings to govern with; high grew the leaves, fair the branching tendrils.

But vengeance fell upon it, torn up and thrown away on the ground, the sirocco to wither its leaves; faded and dry those strong boughs, till at last fire consumed them!

It is planted now far away, in the parched soil of a desert.

Fire came out from those branching boughs, that consumed all the fruit of it; never a sturdy bough more, to be a king’s sceptre. Make lament, then; here is good cause for lament.