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Deposited in the British Museum
THOU alabaster relic! while I hold | |
| My hand upon thy sculptured margin thrown, | |
| Let me recall the scenes thou couldst unfold, | |
| Might’st thou relate the changes thou hast known; | |
| For thou wert primitive in thy formation, | 5 |
| Launched from the Almighty’s hand at the creation. | |
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| Yes! thou wert present when the stars and skies | |
| And worlds unnumbered rolled into their places; | |
| When God from chaos bade the spheres arise, | |
| And fixed the blazing sun upon its basis, | 10 |
| And with his finger on the bounds of space | |
| Marked out each planet’s everlasting race. | |
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| How many thousand ages from thy birth | |
| Thou slept’st in darkness it were vain to ask, | |
| Till Egypt’s sons upheaved thee from the earth, | 15 |
| And year by year pursued their patient task, | |
| Till thou wert carved and decorated thus, | |
| Worthy to be a king’s sarcophagus! | |
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| What time Elijah to the skies ascended, | |
| Or David reigned in holy Palestine, | 20 |
| Some ancient Theban monarch was extended | |
| Beneath the lid of this emblazoned shrine, | |
| And to that subterraneous palace borne, | |
| Which toiling ages in the rock had worn. | |
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| Thebes, from her hundred portals, filled the plain, | 25 |
| To see the car on which thou wert upheld; | |
| What funeral pomps extended in thy train, | |
| What banners waved, what mighty music swelled, | |
| As armies, priests, and crowds bewailed in chorus, | |
| Their king, their god, their Serapis, their Orus! | 30 |
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| Thus to thy second quarry did they trust | |
| Thee, and the lord of all the nations round, | |
| Grim king of silence! monarch of the dust! | |
| Embalmed, anointed, jewelled, sceptred, crowned, | |
| Here did he lie in state, cold, stiff, and stark, | 35 |
| A leathern Pharaoh grinning in the dark. | |
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| Thus ages rolled; but their dissolving breath | |
| Could only blacken that imprisoned thing, | |
| Which wore a ghastly royalty in death, | |
| As if it struggled still to be a king; | 40 |
| And each dissolving century, like the last, | |
| Just dropped its dust upon thy lid, and passed. | |
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| The Persian conqueror o’er Egypt poured | |
| His devastating host,—a motley crew; | |
| The steel-clad horseman, the barbarian horde, | 45 |
| Music and men of every sound and hue, | |
| Priests, archers, eunuchs, concubines, and brutes, | |
| Gongs, trumpets, cymbals, dulcimers, and lutes. | |
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| Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away | |
| The ponderous rock that sealed the sacred tomb; | 50 |
| Then did the slowly penetrating ray | |
| Redeem thee from long centuries of gloom, | |
| And lowered torches flashed against thy side, | |
| As Asia’s king thy blazoned trophies eyed. | |
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| Plucked from his grave, with sacrilegious taunt, | 55 |
| The features of the royal corse they scanned; | |
| Dashing the diadem from his temple gaunt, | |
| They tore the sceptre from his graspless hand; | |
| And on those fields, where once his will was law, | |
| Left him for winds to waste and beasts to gnaw. | 60 |
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| Some pious Thebans, when the storm was past, | |
| Upclosed the sepulchre with cunning skill, | |
| And nature, aiding their devotion, cast | |
| Over its entrance a concealing rill; | |
| Then thy third darkness came, and thou didst sleep | 65 |
| Twenty-three centuries in silence deep. | |
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| But he from whom nor pyramids nor sphinx | |
| Can hide its secrecies, Belzoni, came; | |
| From the tomb’s mouth unlinked the granite links, | |
| Gave thee again to light and life and fame, | 70 |
| And brought thee from the sands and deserts forth, | |
| To charm the pallid children of the north! | |
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| Thou art in London, which, when thou wert new, | |
| Was what Thebes is, a wilderness and waste, | |
| Where savage beast more savage men pursue; | 75 |
| A scene by nature cursed, by man disgraced. | |
| Now, ’t is the world’s metropolis! The high | |
| Queen of arms, learning, arts, and luxury! | |
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| Here, where I hold my hand, ’t is strange to think | |
| What other hands, perchance, preceded mine; | 80 |
| Others have also stood beside thy brink, | |
| And vainly conned the moralizing line! | |
| Kings, sages, chiefs, that touched this stone, like me, | |
| Where are ye now? Where all must shortly be. | |
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| All is mutation; he within this stone | 85 |
| Was once the greatest monarch of the hour. | |
| His bones are dust, his very name unknown! | |
| Go, learn from him the vanity of power; | |
| Seek not the frame’s corruption to control, | |
| But build a lasting mansion for thy soul. | 90 |
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