Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79. | | | | Introductory to Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia | | Egypt | | James Thomson (1834–1882) |
| | (From Liberty, Part II)
THUS spoke the Goddess of the fearless eye; | |
| And at her voice renewed the Vision rose: * * * * * | |
| “For Greece my sons of Egypt I forsook; | |
| A boastful race, that in the vain abyss | |
| Of fabling ages loved to lose their source, | 5 |
| And with their river traced it from the skies. | |
| While there my laws alone despotic reigned, | |
| And king, as well as people, proud obeyed; | |
| I taught them science, virtue, wisdom, arts; | |
| By poets, sages, legislators sought; | 10 |
| The school of polished life, and human-kind. | |
| But when mysterious Superstition came, | |
| And, with her Civil Sister leagued, involved | |
| In studied darkness the desponding mind; | |
| Then Tyrant Power the righteous scourge unloosed: | 15 |
| For yielded reason speaks the soul a slave. | |
| Instead of useful works, like nature’s, great, | |
| Enormous, cruel wonders crushed the land; | |
| And round a tyrant’s tomb, who none deserved, | |
| For one vile carcass perished countless lives. | 20 |
| Then the great Dragon, couched amid his floods, | |
| Swelled his fierce heart, and cried, “This flood is mine, | |
| ’T is I that bid it flow.” But, undeceived, | |
| His frenzy soon the proud blasphemer felt; | |
| Felt that, without my fertilizing power, | 25 |
| Suns lost their force, and Niles o’erflowed in vain.” | | | | |
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