LINES TO AN ALABASTER SARCOPHAGUS,
FOUND IN AN EGYPTIAN TOMB.
THE following lines are addressed to an Alabaster Sarcophagus, supposed to be that of a king, called by Belzoni Psammuthis, but whose real name was Ousiree Menepthah.
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, Launched from th' Almighty's hand at the creation. 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 fix the radiant sun upon its basis, And with His finger on the bounds of space, Marked out each planet's everlasting race. 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, And year by year pursued their patient task, Till thou wert carved and decorated thus, Worthy to be a king's sarcophagus.
What time Elijah to the skies ascended, Or David reigned in holy Palestine, Some ancient Theban monarch was extended Beneath the lid of this emblazoned shrine, And to that subterranean palace borne Which toiling ages in the rock had worn.
Thebes from her hundred portals filled the plain 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!
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, sceptered, crowned, There did he lie in state; cold, stiff, and stark, A leathern Pharaoh, grinning in the dark,
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: And each revolving century, like the last, Just dropped its dust upon thy lid-and passed. The Persian conqueror o'er Egypt poured His devastating host,-a motley crew,- And steel-clad horsemen,-the barbarian horde,- Music and men of every sound and hue,- Priests, archers, eunuchs, concubines, and brutes,— Gongs, trumpets, cymbals, dulcimers, and lutes.
Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away
The ponderous rock that sealed the sacred tomb: 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.
Plucked from his grave with sacrilegious taunt, The features of the royal corpse they scanned: Dashing the diadem from his temples 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.
Some pious Thebans, when the storm was past, Upclosed the sepulchre with cunning skill; And Nature, aiding their devotion, cast O'er its entrance a concealing rill;
Then thy third darkness came, and thou didst sleep Twenty-three centuries in silence deep.
But he, from whom nor pyramid nor sphinx Can hide its secrecies, Belzoni, came,
From the tomb's mouth unclosed the granite links,- Gave thee again to light, and life, and fame,- And brought thee from the sands and deserts forth, To charm "the pallid children of the North."
Thou art in London, which when thou wert new, Was what Thebes is,-a wilderness and waste, Where savage beasts more savage men pursue, A scene by nature cursed, by man disgraced. Now, 'tis the world's metropolis, the high Queen of arms, learning, arts, and luxury.
Here, where I hold my hand, 'tis strange to think What other hands, perchance, preceded mine: 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.
All is mutation; he within this stone
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!-
LINES TO THE WESTERN MUMMY.
O STRANGER, whose repose profound These latter ages dare to break, And call thee from beneath the ground Ere Nature did thy slumber shake,— What wonders of the secret earth Thy lips, too silent, might reveal! Of tribes round whose mysterious birth A thousand envious ages wheel. Thy race, by savage war o'errun, Šunk down, their very name forgot; But ere those fearful times begun, Perhaps, in this sequestered spot, By Friendship's hand thine eyelid closed, By Friendship's hand the turf was laid; And Friendship's here, perhaps, reposed With moonlight vigils in the shade. The stars have run their nightly round, The sun looked out and passed his way, And many a season o'er the ground Has trod where thou so softly lay. And wilt thou not one moment raise Thy weary head, awhile to see The later sports of earthly days,
How like what once enchanted thee? Thy name, thy date, thy life declare-- Perhaps a queen, whose feathery band A thousand maids have sighed to wear, The brightest in thy beauteous land-
Perhaps a Helen, from whose eye Love kindled up the flame of war- Ah, me! do thus thy graces lie
A faded phantom, and no more?
Oh, not like thee would I remain, But o'er the earth my ashes strew, And in some rising bud regain
The freshness that my childhood knew.
But hast thy soul, O maid, so long Around this mournful relic dwelt? Or burst away with pinion strong, And at the foot of Mercy knelt? Or has it in some distant clime,
With curious eye, unsated, strayed, And down the winding stream of time, On every changeful current played? Or, locked in everlasting sleep,
Must we thy heart extinct deplore, Thy fancy lost in darkness weep, And sigh for her who feels no more! Or, exiled to some humbler sphere, In yonder wood-dove dost thou dwell, And murmuring in the stranger's ear, Thy tender melancholy tell?
Whoe'er they be, thy sad remains
Shall from the Muse a tear demand, Who, wandering on these distant plains, Looks fondly to a distant land.
A CHURCH-YARD SCENE.
How sweet and solemn, all alone, With reverened steps from stone to stone, In a small village church-yard lying, O'er intervening flowers to move! And as we read the names unknown
young and old to judgment gone, And hear in the calm air above Time onwards softly flying, To meditate, in Christian love,
Upon the dead and dying!
Across the silence seemed to go With dead-like motion wavering slow, And shrouded in their folds of snow, The friends we loved long long ago! Gliding across the sad retreat, How beautiful their phantom-feet! What tenderness is in their eyes, Turned where the poor survivor lies 'Mid monitory sanctities!
What years of vanished joy are fanned From one uplifting of that hand
In its white stillness! when the Shade Doth glimmeringly in sunshine fade From our embrace, how dim appears This world's life through a mist of tears! Vain hopes! blind sorrows! needless fears!
Such is the scene around me now: A little church-yard on the brow Of a green pastoral hill; Its sylvan village sleeps below, And faintly here is heard the flow Of Woodburn's summer rill;
A place where all things mournful meet, And yet the sweetest of the sweet,
The stillest of the still!
With what a pensive beauty fall Across the mossy mouldering wall That rose-tree's clustered arches! See The robin-red-breast warily,
Bright, through the blossoms, leaves his nest: Sweet ingrate, through the winter blest At the firesides of men-but shy Through all the sunny summer hours, He hides himself among the flowers In his own wild festivity.
What lulling sound and shadow cool
Hangs half the darkened church-yard o'er,
From thy green depth so beautiful,
Thou gorgeous sycamore;
Oft hath the holy wine and bread
Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent, Where many a bright and hoary head
Bowed at that awful sacrament.
Now all beneath the turf are laid
On which they sat, and sang, and prayed.
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