Classic Poem

WHICH BLOSSOMED, AFTER HAVING LAIN FOR AGES IN THE HAND OF

AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY

What , wide awake, sweet stranger, wide awake?
And laughing coyly at an English sun,
And blessing him with smiles for having thawed
Thine icy chain, for having woke thee gently
From thy long slumber of three thousand years?
Methinks I see the eye of wonder peering
From thy tall pistil, looking strangely forth
As from a watch-tow'r at thy fellow-flowers,
Admiring much the rich variety
Of many a gem in nature's jewel-case
Unknown to thee — the drooping hyacinth,
The prim ranunculus, and gay geranium,
And dahlias rare, and hearts-ease of all hues,
Mealy auriculas, and spotted lilies,
Gaudy carnations, and the modest face
Of the moss rose: methinks thy wondering leaves
And curious petals at the long-lost sun
Gaze with a lingering love, bedizen'd o'er
With a small firmament of eyes to catch
The luxury of his smile; as o'er the pool
Hovering midway the gorgeous dragon-fly
Watches his mates with thousand-facet vision;
Or as when underneath the waterfall
Floating in sunny wreaths the fretted foam
Mirrors blue heaven in its million orbs.
Methinks I see thy fair and foreign face
Blush with the glowing ardour of first love
(Mindful of ancient Nile, and those warm skies
And tender tales of insect coquetry),
When some bright butterfly descends to sip
The exotic fragrance of thy nectarous dew:
Even so, Jabal's daughters in old time.
Welcomed the sons of God, who sprang from heaven
To gaze with rapture on earth's fairest creatures,
And fan them with their rainbow-coloured wings.

Didst ever dream of such a day as this,
A day of life and sunshine, when entranced
In the cold tomb of yonder shrivelled hand?
Didst ever try to shoot thy fibres forth
Through thy close prison-bars, those parchment fingers,
And strive to blossom in a charnel-house?
Didst ever struggle to be free — to leap
From that forced wedlock with a clammy corpse —
To burst thy bonds asunder, and spring up
A thing of light to commerce with the skies?
Or didst thou rather, with endurance strong
(That might have taught a Newton passive power),
Baffle corruption, and live on unharmed
Amid the pestilent steams that wrapped thee round,
Like Mithridates, when he WOULD not die,
But conquered poison by his strong resolve?
O, life! thy name is mystery — that couldst
Thus energize inert, be, yet not be,
Concentrating thy powers in one small point;
Couldst mail a germ, in seeming weakness strong,
And arm it as thy champion against Death;
Couldst give a weed, dug from the common field,
What Egypt hath not, Immortality;
Couldst lull it off to sleep ere Carthage was,
And wake it up when Carthage is no more!
It may be, suns and stars that walked the heavens,
While thou wert in thy slumber, gentle flower,
Have sprung from chaos, blazed their age, and burst;
It may be, that thou seest the world worn out,
And lookst on meadows of a paler green,
Flow'rs of a duskier hue, and all creation,
Down to degenerate man, more and more dead,
Than in those golden hours, nearest to Eden,
When mother-earth and thou and all were young.

And he that held thee — this bituminous shape,
This fossil shell once tenanted by life,
This chrysalis husk of the poor insect man,
This leathern coat, this carcase of a soul —
What was thy story, O mine elder brother?
I note thee now, swathed like a Milanese babe,
But thine are tinctured grave-clothes, fathoms long
On thy shrunk breast the mystic beetle lies
Commending thee to earth, and to the sun
Regenerating all; a curious scroll,
Full of strange-written lore, rests at thy side;
While a quaint rosary of bestial gods,
Ammon, Bubastes, Thoth, Osiris, Apis,
And Horus with the curl, Typhon and Phthah.
Amulets ciphered with forgotten tongues,
And charm'd religious beads circle thy throat.
Greatly thy children honoured thee in death,
And for the light vouchsafed them they did well:
In that they hoped, and not unwisely hoped,
Again in his own flesh to see their sire;
And their affection spared not, so the form
They loved in life might rest adorned in death.

But this dry hand: Was it once terrible
When among warrior bands thou wentest forth
With Ramses, or Sesostris, yet again
To crush the rebel Ethiop? Wast thou set
A taskmaster to toiling Israil
When Cheops or Cephrenes raised to heaven
Their giant sepulchres? Or did this hand,
That lately held a flow'r, with murderous grasp
Tear from the Hebrew mother her poor babe,
To fling it to the crocodile? Or, rather,
Wert thou some garden-lover, and this bulb
Perchance most rare and fine, prized above gold,
(As in the mad world's dotage yesterday
A tulip-root could fetch a prince's ransom,)
Was to be buried with thee, as thy praise,
Thy Rosicrucian lamp, thine idol weed?
Perchance — O, kinder thought and better hope! —
Some priest of Isis shrined this root with thee
As Nature's hieroglyphic, her half-guess
Of glimmering faith, that soul will never die:
What emblem liker, or more eloquent
Of immortality, whether the Sphinx,
Scarab, or circled snake, or wide-winged orb,
The azure-coloured arch, the sleepless eye,
The pyramid four-square, or flowing river,
Or all whatever else were symbols apt
In Egypt's alphabet, as thou, dry root,
So full of living promise? Yes, I see
Nature's " resurgam " sculptured there in words
That all of every clime may run and read:
I see the better hope of better times,
Hope against hope, wrapped in the dusky coats
Of a poor leek; I note glad tidings there
Of happier things: this undecaying corpse
A little longer, yet a little longer,
Must slumber on, but shall awake at last;
A little longer, yet a little longer,
And at the trumpet's voice shall this dry shape
Start up, instinct with life, the same, tho' changed,
And put on incorruption's glorious garb:
Perchance for second death; perchance to shine,
If aught of Israel's God he knew and loved,
Brighter than seraphs, and beyond the sun.