Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79.

Introductory to Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia

The Papyrus

By Robert Treat Paine (1773–1811)

(From Ode Written for, and Sung at the Anniversary of the Faustus Association, October 3, 1809)

ANCIENT wisdom may boast of the spice and the weed,

Which embalmed the cold forms of its heroes and sages;

But their fame lives alone on the leaf of the reed,

Which has grown through the clefts in the ruins of ages.