The Rise and Fall of Nations

The Rise and Fall of Nations

The title below was given in reference to Mr. Marvell's writings
on the eclipsing of nations.

YOU, ANDREW MARVELL

Referring to America (here and now).....
And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the Night;

To feel creep up, the curving east
The earthly chill of dusk; and slow
Upon those underlands the vast,
And ever climbing shadow grow.

Referring to the fall of nations in the past....The EAST
Medio-Persia.....
And strange, at Ecbatan the trees
Take---leaf by leaf---the evening. Strange,
The flooding-dark about their knees;
The mountains over Persia change.

And now at Kermanshah, the gate---
Dark, empty---and the withered grass….
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass.

And Bagdad darken, and the bridge
Across the silent river gone;
And through Arabia, the edge of evening
Widen and steal on.

The WEST : the glory of Greece........
And deepen on Palmyra's street,
The wheel rut in the ruined stone.
And Lebanon fade out, and Crete--
High through the clouds---and overblown.

the power of Rome.....
And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom; and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls.

Others.....
And Spain go under, and the shore
Of Africa, the gilded sand.
And evening vanish, and no more
The low pale light across that land.

America......
Nor now the long light on the sea…....
And HERE, face downward in the sun,
To feel how swift (how secretly)
The shadow of the Night comes on……

by Archibald MacLeish

Italics, underlinings and capitols, this editor

In this famous poem, Mr. MacLeish paints for us a picture. The picture is that of an eclipse passing its shadow over the nations of the world, as they rise and fall in History.
First the shadow passes over the Medio-Persian empires, then Greece, then Rome etc.
Finally it looms over our nation, as we too neglect the Lord.
All nations that fear not nor reverence God awaits this fate. .. Daniel 2:37--45

DRINKING THE CUP OF JUDGMENT..... Jeremiah 25

"and ALL the KINGDOMS of the WORLD,
which are upon the face of the earth:
and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them"
Jeremiah 25: 26

"How is Sheshach taken ! and how the praise of the whole earth is surprised !
How is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!
Jeremiah 51:41

"Come near ye nations to hear; and hearken, ye people:
let the earth hear, and all that is therein:
the world and all things that come forth of it.
for the indignation of the Lord is upon ALL nations,
and His fury upon all their armies"
Isaiah 34:1, 2

"Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket,
and are counted as the small dust of the balance:
behold, He taketh up the isles as a very little thing.....
ALL nations before Him are as nothing:
and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity." Isaiah 40: 15 + 17

"it is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth,
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.
[It is He] that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain,
and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
That bringeth the princes to nothing;
He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.....
and He shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither,
and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble."

...the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth"
Isaiah 40

see also Haggai 2:22 Jeremiah 50 and Jeremiah 51

The dividing of the nations ... Matt
http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/feb2006/matt211.htm

"The Mills of the Gods Grind Slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine"
http://jove.prohosting.com/~dathde/poetry/gregspicks/themillsofthegods.htm
www.cybertime.net/~ajgood/mills.html

Bye Bye American Pie....Don McLean
Words: http://www.robinsweb.com/midi-lyrics/american_pie.html
Music : http://www.content.loudeye.com/scripts/hurl.exe?~a-600111/0654081_0102_00_0002.ra

The Hollow Men -- T S Eliot
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html

Ancient History : The Power of Rome
http://www.omnibusol.com/anrome.html

The Emperors and Caesars of Rome
http://www.omnibusol.com/emperors.html

Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of Rome"
http://www.his.com/~z/gibbon.html

The Roman Empire
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

S P Q R ... "The Senate and the People of Rome"
http://www.travel-italy.com/community/feature_articles/spqr.php

Rome celebrates it 2,756 birthday-- April 21, 2003
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/22/wrome22.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/22/ixworld.html

The Founding of Rome
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_Rome
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stesichorus

Famous People in History
http://members.aol.com/dkaplan888/main.html

Short Table of History
http://www.scholiast.org/history/timetables/ad1to99.html

?

www.cybertime.net/~ajgood/title2.html