Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79. | | | | New England: Cambridge, Mass. | | The Sphinx at Mount Auburn | | Charlotte Fiske Bates (1838–1916) |
| | | HOW grand she is enthroned among the dead, | |
| The graves like trophies all about her spread! | |
| Have these not perished as in fable old | |
| With some unfathomed riddle in their hold? | |
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| But what the riddle that she now doth ask, | 5 |
| The might of man so fatally to task? | |
| Well may we fancy “What are Life and Death?” | |
| To be the question that has hushed their breath. | |
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| Sphinx! Life and Death in thee their type have found, | |
| For so are they in mystic oneness bound; | 10 |
| Fruitful as woman, beautiful as she, | |
| Dread as the lion in his majesty. | | | | |
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