Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79.
The Pyramids of Egypt
By Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)Y
Ye dwellings of the dead,
Where crownéd brow and sceptred hand
Sleep in their dreamless bed,
Lone monuments of other days
Who lift to Heaven your ceaseless gaze,—
Philosophy may hear
An echo of a hallowed tone,
Telling to mortal ear
Lessons of wisdom deep and stern,—
Lessons which pride is slow to learn;—
The diadems of kings,
Are but the visions of an hour,
All unenduring things;
And how that Death hath made for all
A chamber in his silent hall.
We know, we know that all must die!
Where is our knowledge then,—
The plotting head, the beaming eye,
The boasts of mortal men?
In earth’s oblivion, dull and deep,
We sleep our unawakened sleep;
And ere the day are gone,—
When from his misty joyless glade
Stern Hades glideth on,
Wrapt in his robe of quiet gloom,
To call us to the silent tomb.
The monarch’s jewelled brow,
Won by the wealth, the pomp of power,
In which he joyeth now:
Poor mortal! while the sun of spring
Smiles on his warm imagining,—
And aspirations vain,
And marches with a godlike stride,
Chilling the courtier train
With the cold glance of royal ire,
More dreaded than the lightning fire.
The motley pageant flies!
Weep for the weakness of the proud,
The follies of the wise!
Ever within the golden ring
That rounds the temples of a king,
Holdeth his stubborn court;
And, as he gives to royalty
Its momentary sport,
Points his wan finger all the while
With shaking head and bitter smile:
Leaps up within the hold;
And, with a little hidden pin,
Bores through his wall of gold.
What are we in our fate and fall?
Night, night, the jailer of us all,
The beautiful, the brave,
The ignorant of human pain,
The lord of land and wave,
The shepherd of his people’s rest,
The ever and the wholly blest.
The hired lamentings rise;
And there is striking of fair hands,
And weeping of bright eyes;
And the long locks of women fall
In sorrow round that gorgeous hall.
The tomb of all his race
Hath opened for his shivering clay
The dismal dwelling-place,
The dim abyss of sculptured stones,
The prison-house of royal bones.
But, as I wander by,
And gaze upon yon marble bed
With lost and loitering eye,
Till back upon my awestruck soul
A thousand ages seem to roll,
Hides in its pathless gloom,
Thy glory and thy nothingness,
Thine empire and thy tomb;
And call thee, Psammis, back to light,
Back from the veil of death and night.
Thou lingerest in the grave;
Thou, the destroyer of the strong,
The powerful to save:
Come from thy darkness; set again
Thy saffron sandal on the plain;
Its wonted radiance yet;
And let thy bright tiara beam
Around thy locks of jet;
And play the king upon this spot
As when—alas! thou listenest not!
Thy very name is hid;
Yet pride hath heaped upon thy clay
A ponderous Pyramid;
And thou art kingly still, and blest
In a right royal place of rest.
Some traveller idly stalks
Around the tomb of all thy line,
And tramples as he walks
With rebel foot and reckless eye,
The dust which once was majesty.
Traced by some artist hand,
And all that now remains of thee,
Dragged to a distant land,
Must be a thing for girls to know,
A jest, a marvel, and a show!