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Anonymous translation
PORTENTOUS Egypt! I in thee behold | |
| And studiously examine human-kind, | |
| Learning to know me in mine origin, | |
| In the primeval and the social state. | |
| A cultivator first, man next obeyed | 5 |
| Wise Nature’s voice internal, equal men | |
| Uniting, and to empire raising law, | |
| The expression of the universal will, | |
| That gives to virtue recompense, to crime | |
| Due punishment, and to the general good | 10 |
| Bids private interest be sacrificed. | |
| In thee the exalted temple of the arts | |
| Was founded, high in thee they rose, in thee | |
| Long ages saw their proudest excellence. | |
| The Persian worshipper of sun or fire | 15 |
| From thee derived his creed. The arts from thee | |
| Followed Sesostris’ arms to the utmost plains | |
| Of the scorched Orient, in caution where | |
| Lurks the Chinese. Thou wondrous Egypt! through | |
| Vast Hindostan thy worship and thy laws | 20 |
| I trace. In thee to the inquirer’s gaze | |
| Nature uncovered first the ample breast | |
| Of science, that contemplates, measuring, | |
| Heaven’s vault, and tracks the bright stars’ circling course. * * * * * | |
| From out the bosom of thine opulence | 25 |
| And glory vast imagination spreads | |
| Her wings. In thine immortal works I find | |
| Proofs how sublime that human spirit is, | |
| Which the dull atheist, depreciating, | |
| Calls but an instinct of more perfect kind, | 30 |
| More active, than the never-varying brute’s. | |
| More is my being, more. Flashes in me | |
| A ray reflected from the eternal light. | |
| All the philosophy my verses breathe, | |
| The imagination in their cadences, | 35 |
| Result not from unconscious mechanism. * * * * * | |
| Thebes is in ruins, Memphis is but dust, | |
| O’er polished Egypt savage Egypt lies. | |
| Midst deserts does the persevering hand | |
| Of skilful antiquary disinter | 40 |
| Columns of splintered porphyry, remains | |
| Of ancient porticos; each single one | |
| Of greater worth, O thou immortal Rome, | |
| Than all thou from the desolating Goth, | |
| And those worse Vandals of the Seine, hast saved! | 45 |
| Buried beneath light grains of arid sand, | |
| The golden palaces, the aspiring towers, | |
| Of Mœris, Amasis, Sesostris, lie; | |
| And the immortal pyramids contend | |
| In durability against the world: | 50 |
| Planted midst centuries’ shade, Time ’gainst their tops | |
| Scarce grazes his ne’er-resting iron wing. | |
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| In Egypt to perfection did the arts | |
| Attain; in Egypt they declined, they died: | |
| Of all that ’s mortal such the unfailing lot; | 55 |
| Only the light of science ’gainst Death’s law | |
| Eternally endures. The basis firm | |
| Of the fair temple of Geometry | |
| Was in portentous Egypt laid. The doors | |
| Of vasty Nature by Geometry | 60 |
| Are opened; to her fortress she conducts | |
| The sage. With her, beneath the fervid sun, | |
| The globe I measure; only by her aid | |
| Couldst thou, learned Kepler, the eternal laws | |
| Of the fixed stars discover; and with her | 65 |
| Grasps the philosopher the ellipse immense, | |
| Eccentric, of the sad, and erst unknown, | |
| Far-wandering comet. Justly if I claim | |
| The name geometrician, certainly | |
| Matter inert is not what in me thinks. | 70 |
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