Classic Poem

A SHORT arc bounds the limit of our sight;
With level gaze we scan the earthly floor,
And all our skill shows not an inch beyond
The vista of our seventy inches height.
The bounded deep to us is never more
Than the horizon of a narrow pond.

The future lies beyond the rounded rim;
The present beats before our puny feet;
The past was washed out on the morning tide; —
Past, Present, Future are as one to Him
Who bids the wave advance, be still, retreat,
And mercifully doth the future hide.

The sad-eyed Sphinx has seen the cycles roll,
The pyramids arise, and nations fall,
The mighty deeds of kings inscribed with pain
Lost in the glory of a keyless scroll,
Rubbed by the very dust from sculptured wall —
Graving and wall to dust resolved again.

Deep was thy guilt, O Egypt, when the Lord
In anger smote thee with a heavy hand,
Thy pleasant waters turned to blood, and sent
O'er all thy land the crawling things abhorred,
Darkened thy skies with winged venom, and
In night and blood the crowning punishment.

Thou hast beheld the mighty come and go;
Greek, Roman, Moslem, in successive tide
Sweep o'er thee, triumph, shudder, and depart, —
Sad eldest-born of earth and heir of woe,
Prometheus of nations, death-denied,
The vultures ever at thy living heart.

What is thy crime, O Egypt, now, that God
Such retribution on thy head should send,
Than His ten plagues tenfold more fraught with woe?
Ask of the stony Sphinx whose vision broad
Has seen the stubborn pride of Pharaoh bend,
And Gordon's crumble as the sands below.