The Burden of Egypt - Luxor

Who would not feel and satisfy this want,   
  Watching, as I, in Karnak’s roofless halls,   
  Subnuvolar lights of evening sharply slant   
  Through pillared masses and on wasted walls?   
  Who would not learn, there is no form but palls           
  On the progressive spirit of mankind,   
  When here around in soulless sorrow falls   
  That which seemed permanence itself, designed   
To raze the sense of death from out all human mind.   
 
  For near the temple ever lies the tomb,           
  The dwelling, not the dungeon, of the dead,   
  Where they abide in glorifying gloom,   
  In lofty chambers with rich colors spread,   
  Vast corridors, all carved and decorated   
  For entertainment of their ghostly lord,           
  When he may leave his alabaster bed,   
  And see, with pleasure earth could scarce afford,   
These subterranean walls his power and wealth record.   
 
  Often ’t was willed this splendor should be sealed   
  Not only from profane but priestly eyes,           
  That to no future gaze might be revealed   
  The secret palace where a Pharaoh lies,   
  Amid his world-enduring obsequies;   
  And though we, children of a distant shore,   
  Here search and scan, yet much our skill defies;           
  One chance the less, some grains of sand the more,   
And never had been found that vault’s mysterious door.