Samuel HaNagid - Midnight on the Campaign lyrics

I quartered my troops in a citadel Laid waste by commanders of yesteryear They fell asleep at its walls and foundations While its former masters slept beneath. Then I said in my heart: "O what has come Of the people that dwelt here before we came? Where are the builders, and where the destroyers, The rich and the poor, the lords and their slaves, The mourners and grooms, the fathers and sons, The bereaved, the begetters, the meek, the courageous? Great peoples one by one have all come And died in the pa**age of years and ages. They lodged on the face of the earth long ago Who are lodged in the gut of the ground today. Their proud palaces turned into humbling tombs. Their pleasant courts to dust again.. And if they could raise their heads and rise they'd take our lives and pleasures! Believe it, My living soul! In truth and tomorrow, I'll be like them- and this troop of sleepers."