Yet pilgrims from enlightened climes
Come, o'er departed pomp to muse;
To trace their glories, — and their strange
Dim hieroglyphics to peruse;
To wipe the drifting sands away,
And ope their treasures to the day.
Great Cheops! on the topmost stone
I've stood, of thy vast pyramid;
And by the blazing torch-light read
The secrets in thy caverns hid;
And scanned those blackened walls with dread,
Reared to enclose thy kingly dead.
How thrilled the soul with crowding thought,
As far the eye the desert viewed,
Tracing Sycara's massive piles,
Soar o'er the boundless solitude,
Uprearing their dark steps on high,
As if to prop the bending sky.
Beneath, the fertilizing Nile
Poured its full flood o'er smiling plains;
Changeless as when Sesostris led
The myriads of his wide domains,
And here encamped, or reared the mound
Of the tall pyramid from the ground.
[Extract]