| |
| POMP of Egypt’s elder day, | |
| Shade of the mighty passed away, | |
| Whose giant works still frown sublime | |
| Mid the twilight shades of time; | |
| Fanes, of sculpture vast and rude, | 5 |
| That strew the sandy solitude, | |
| Lo! before our startled eyes, | |
| As at a wizard’s wand, ye rise, | |
| Glimmering larger through the gloom! | |
| While on the secrets of the tomb, | 10 |
| Rapt in other times, we gaze, | |
| The Mother Queen of ancient days, | |
| Her mystic symbol in her hand, | |
| Great Isis, seems herself to stand. | |
| |
| From mazy vaults, high-arched and dim, | 15 |
| Hark! heard ye not Osiris’ hymn? | |
| And saw ye not in order dread | |
| The long procession of the dead? | |
| Forms that the night of years concealed, | |
| As by a flash, are here revealed; | 20 |
| Chiefs who sang the victor song; | |
| Sceptred kings,—a shadowy throng,— | |
| From slumber of three thousand years | |
| Each, as in light and life, appears, | |
| Stern as of yore! Yes, vision vast, | 25 |
| Three thousand years have silent passed, | |
| Suns of empire risen and set, | |
| Whose story Time can ne’er forget, | |
| Time, in the morning of her pride | |
| Immense, along the Nile’s green side, | 30 |
| The City of the Sun appeared, | |
| And her gigantic image reared. | |
| |
| As Memnon, like a trembling string | |
| When the sun, with rising ray, | |
| Streaked the lonely desert gray, | 35 |
| Sent forth its magic murmuring, | |
| That just was heard,—then died away; | |
| So passed, O Thebes! thy morning pride! | |
| Thy glory was the sound that died! | |
| Dark city of the desolate, | 40 |
| Once thou wert rich, and proud, and great! | |
| This busy-peopled isle was then | |
| A waste, or roamed by savage men | |
| Whose gay descendants now appear | |
| To mark thy wreck of glory here. | 45 |
| |
| Phantom of that city old, | |
| Whose mystic spoils I now behold, | |
| A kingdom’s sepulchre, O, say, | |
| Shall Albion’s own illustrious day | |
| Thus darkly close! Her power, her fame, | 50 |
| Thus pass away, a shade, a name! | |
| The Mausoleum murmured as I spoke; | |
| A spectre seemed to rise, like towering smoke; | |
| It answered not, but pointed as it fled | |
| To the black carcass of the sightless dead. | 55 |
| Once more I heard the sounds of earthly strife, | |
| And the streets ringing to the stir of life. | |
| |
