The turrets on the battlemented walls
Swarm with skilled bowmen, archers—­from them falls
A cloud of winged missiles on their foes,
Who swift reply with shouts and twanging bows;
And now amidst the raining death appears
The scaling ladder, lined with glistening spears,
But see! the ponderous catapults now crush
The ladder, spearsmen, with their mighty rush
Of rocks and beams, nor in their fury slacked
As if a toppling wall came down intact
Upon the maddened mass of men below. 
But other ladders rise, and up them flow
The tides of armed spearsmen with their shields;
From others bowmen shoot, and each man wields
A weapon, never yielding to his foe,
For death alone he aims with furious blow. 
At last upon the wall two soldiers spring,
A score of spears their corses backward fling. 
But others take their place, and man to man,
And spear to spear, and sword to sword, till ran
The walls with slippery gore; but Erech’s men
Are brave and hurl them from their walls again. 
And now the battering-rams with swinging power
Commence their thunders, shaking every tower;
And miners work beneath the crumbling walls,
Alas! before her foemen Erech falls. 
Vain are suspended chains against the blows
Of dire assaulting engines.

Ho! there goes
The eastern wall with Erech’s strongest tower! 
And through the breach her furious foemen pour: 
A wall of steel withstands the onset fierce,
But thronging Elam’s spears the lines soon pierce,
A band of chosen men there fight to die,
Before their enemies disdain to fly;
The masari[22] within the breach thus died,
And with their dying shout the foe defied. 
The foes swarm through the breach and o’er the walls,
And Erech in extremity loud calls
Upon the gods for aid, but prays for naught,
While Elam’s soldiers, to a frenzy wrought,
Pursue and slay, and sack the city old
With fiendish shouts for blood and yellow gold. 
Each man that falls the foe decapitates,
And bears the reeking death to Erech’s gates. 
The gates are hidden ’neath the pile of heads
That climbs above the walls, and outward spreads
A heap of ghastly plunder bathed in blood. 
Beside them calm scribes of the victors stood,
And careful note the butcher’s name, and check
The list; and for each head a price they make. 
Thus pitiless the sword of Elam gleams
And the best blood of Erech flows in streams. 
From Erech’s walls some fugitives escape,
And others in Euphrates wildly leap,
And hide beneath its rushes on the bank
And many ’neath the yellow waters sank.