Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79.
A Vision of Old Egypt
By Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel (1834–1894)M
’Neath an abrupt and weird craggy pile,
Its flame-hued cliffs caverned with many a tomb,
Haunt of lone winds and birds of dusky plume.
A boat with monks that chanted floated nigh;
But when they paused, some awful far reply
Came ever from the mountain’s heart: one said,
“A voice from old-world priests of ages dead,
Who slumbering in their stupendous fane
Deep in yon mountain’s heart are roused again
With a faint consciousness that stirs and dies
To breathe a note of hoary litanies,
Erewhile they chanted while impassive Death
Quenched ever some poor heart’s weak flame of faith.”
A tone it seemed bereft of life, unblest,
Emptied of thought and joy, vaguely opprest
A moment with the living voice of prayer
They have proved wasted on the lifeless air.
Embers of old hope wake to feel the doom
Of smothered souls in everlasting gloom.
Methought I lay in silence drear profound
On some hot sand; the close incumbent air
Reeked faint as from some dismal creature’s lair,
Some presence nigh of bird or beast obscene,
Hyena, bat, that loves to lurk unseen.
And yet a dubious glimmer near me lay
Upon the sand, and slow the space to gray
Opened about me till I dim defined
Columnar masses pale gigantic-lined
Rude, huge and lofty, with no capital
Or fretted moulding wrought fantastical,
Titanic blocks each horizontal laid
From pier to pier, bridging abysmal shade.
And lo! I saw each giant pillar bulged
With form stupendous as of man, divulged,
Standing each speechless, vast along the stone,
Each to the full height of his pillar grown,—
A colonnade of these on either hand
My twilit nave; afar they vague expand,
To my rapt vision dwindling infinite,
Phantoms assembling in the halls of Night!
And then I noted nigh a crevice small;
Through this I deemed that Day into the Hall
Passed half in awe to melt the shroud of gloom
That broods o’er these in their eternal tomb.
These then in pauses of the living prayer
Wailed that antistrophe of Death’s despair!
And still Night jealous claims them for her own,
Nor may her shadow free from them be thrown,
But silent like black water it abides
Forever resting down their mighty sides.
Their mummied forms are like their faces pale,
Each in vast crossing hands the crook and flail
Of an Osirian on his bosom broad
Holds folded close, each mitred like the god.
Informs with fear the solitude intense,
Voiceless and moveless pale forever there,
In some unguessed unhuman-wise aware.
But calm serene is every countenance,
Unvexéd more of any human chance,
Sublime unearthly in its restfulness,
Quiet in destiny the passionless.
Fond fool! to dream that hopes or joys or woes
Of ours may ruffle this immense repose!
Can ever these have been of mortal race,
Crushing for pelf or fame with eager face,
Throbbing for pleasure, flushed elate with gain,
Sullen or blank with loss and lit again?
Yea, these were mortal, even as thyself,
And thou shalt be as they, O wildered elf!
Blown tossed like sere leaves, little comforted,
Thou shalt be tranquil calm as are the dead!
Even thy vain bubble-turmoil in the flood
Viewed from the still height very grand and good!
And straight between each pillared phantom shows
Sunk in the darkness a sarcophagus,
Heart of the darkness, solid, ponderous;
The massy lid of each, prodigious, shoved
Awry as though the dread inmate had moved.
Then I knew these were Pharaohs of the Sun,
Ramses-Sesostris, Amunoph-Memnon,
Sesortasen, and many a power beside,
Priest-kings imperial, who strode in pride
Over dwarfed continents astonished pale
Making the hearts of all the nations fail—
Then every breath bore rumors of their fame:
What are they now? the shadow of a name!
’T is noon, relentless rules the blaze
Of our Sun-god that ne’er a breeze allays.
Far, far away the windless river burning
Through wan sand-levels dimly banked
Of distant yellow hills, but nearer flanked
With palm-girt, loam-built thorps at every turning,
And oft a huge stone temple spread
With obelisk and sphinx and banner red;
Silent from heat our swarthy sailors towing
The boat becalmed with rope on land;
Anon some baked wave-minded mass at hand
From yon loam-ridge is loosened in their going,
Falling with sudden splash and thud,
Nor mars my soul’s luxurious mood
Enhanced of distant water-wheels’ long droning,
For dreamy listlessness akin
To hazy light the lulled world swooneth in.
I know the hind in midst of that intoning
Sits in the centre of the wheel
While hemp-slung jars tilt ever and refill,
A yoke of patient circling oxen guiding,
Roofed from the scorching glare
By large leaves of the melons trellised there.
On yon low sandflat motionless abiding,
Behold a crocodile, and nigh
Upon the neighbor bank one may espy
Some ibis white with pink flamingoes resting;
But when day waneth we shall hear
Clangor of wild geese in the crystal clear,
Their living chain wedgewise the glory breasting.