| |
| A SHOAL of idlers, from a merchant craft | |
| Anchor’d off Alexandria, went ashore, | |
| And mounting asses in their headlong glee, | |
| Round Pompey’s Pillar rode with hoots and taunts, | |
| As men oft say, “What art thou more than we?” | 5 |
| Next in a boat they floated up the Nile | |
| Singing and drinking, swearing senseless oaths, | |
| Shouting, and laughing most derisively | |
| At all majestic scenes. A bank they reach’d, | |
| And clambering up, play’d gambols among tombs; | 10 |
| And in portentous ruins (through whose depths, | |
| The mighty twilight of departed Gods, | |
| Both sun and moon glanced furtive, as in awe) | |
| They hid, and whoop’d, and spat on sacred things. | |
| |
| At length, beneath the blazing sun they lounged | 15 |
| Near a great Pyramid. Awhile they stood | |
| With stupid stare, until resentment grew; | |
| In the recoil of meanness from the vast; | |
| And gathering stones, they with coarse oaths and jibes | |
| (As they would say, “What art thou more than we?”) | 20 |
| Pelted the Pyramid! But soon these men, | |
| Hot and exhausted, sat them down to drink— | |
| Wrangled, smok’d, spat, and laugh’d, and drowsily | |
| Curs’d the bald Pyramid, and fell asleep. | |
| |
| Night came:—a little sand went drifting by— | 25 |
| And morn again was in the soft blue heavens. | |
| The broad slopes of the shining Pyramid | |
| Look’d down in their austere simplicity | |
| Upon the glistening silence of the sands | |
| Whereon no trace of mortal dust was seen. | 30 |
| |
