Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79. | | | | Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia: Ipsamboul (Abu-Simbel), Nubia | | Ipsamboul | | Nicholas Michell (1807–1880) |
| | (From Ruins of Many Lands)
IPSAMBOUL!—name that wakens wonder’s thrill,— | |
| Why stand ye, spell-bound, near yon sculptured hill? | |
| High o’er the flowing Nile the temples frown, | |
| Their monster guardians gazing dimly down, | |
| Those awful forms that seem with being rife, | 5 |
| Primeval giants starting into life! | |
| Beside those limbs how pygmy-like are we! | |
| ’T is toil and pain to climb the statue’s knee: | |
| See the broad breast like some vast buttress spread, | |
| High as a war-tower springs the huge capped head. | 10 |
| What were they, mighty ones, dark Titan band, | |
| Shaped to this awful guise by human hand? | |
| The forms of heroes conquering once the world, | |
| Or types of gods from heaven’s high regions hurled? | |
| Yet in those lofty features naught appears | 15 |
| To shock the gazer’s heart, or wake his fears; | |
| Calm and benign, they front the rising sun, | |
| How oft the burning orb his course hath run, | |
| Lighting to million graves the human race, | |
| But, still returning, sees each solemn face! | 20 | | | |
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