Great city, fabled isle, were you at the far end
Of the world, across the starry ocean,
As some aver? Or Krete's sister,
Now only a dead volcano's crater?

Atlantis! Home of philosopher-kings,
Bull-leapers, golden fruit,
The port of a thousand ships!
Scholars came to you; poets sang of you!

Atlantis! Emerald towers sunk
A hundred fathoms beneath the waves,
You were the world's first civilization,
And suffered every civilization's fate:

By man or nature destroyed--
Only the faintest traces whereof
In the sands of memory remain.
But, Atlantis--

Your crushed heart's wound
Still burns!

S. R. Compton is an occasional poet. In the last century, he had poems in Star*Line, Velocities, and Alba. His previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive. He works as a senior copy editor at PC World Magazine in San Francisco.