| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | The Bird-Bride: A Volume of Ballads and Sonnets (1889)
II. The Smile of All-Wisdom | | By Graham R. Thomson (Rosamund Marriott Watson) (1860–1911) |
| | | SEEKING the Smile of All-Wisdom one wandered afar | |
| (He that first fashioned the Sphinx, in the dust of the past): | |
| Looked on the faces of sages, of heroes of war; | |
| Looked on the lips of the lords of the uttermost star, | |
| Magi, and kings of the earth—nor had found it at last, | 5 |
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| Save for the word of a slave, hoary-headed and weak, | |
| Trembling, that clung to the hem of his garment, and said, | |
| ‘Master, the least of your servants has found what you seek: | |
| (Pardon, O Master, if all without wisdom I speak!) | |
| Sculpture the smile of your Sphinx from the lips of the Dead!’ | 10 |
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| Rising, he followed the slave to a hovel anear; | |
| Lifted the mat from the doorway and looked on the bed. | |
| ‘Nay, thou hast spoken aright, thou hast nothing to fear: | |
| That which I sought thou hast found, Friend; for, lo, it is here!— | |
| Surely the Smile of the Sphinx is the Smile of the Dead!’ | 15 |
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| Aye, on the stone lips of old, on the clay of to-day, | |
| Tranquil, inscrutable, sweet with a quiet disdain, | |
| Lingers the Smile of All-Wisdom, still seeming to say, | |
| ‘Fret not, O Friend, at the turmoil—it passeth away; | |
| Waste not the Now in the search of a Then that is vain: | 20 |
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| ‘Hushed in the infinite dusk at the end shall ye be, | |
| Feverish, questioning spirits that travail and yearn, | |
| Quenched in the fulness of knowledge and peaceful as we: | |
| Lo, we have lifted the veil—there was nothing to see! | |
| Lo, we have looked on the scroll—there was nothing to learn!’ | 25 | | | |
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