No More Learning

How many grandest rulers in his day
Chrem plucked down, there are now none can say.
Whether he ruled with gentle hand or rough,
None know. He once was--no longer is--enough,
Crowned Time, whose seat is on a ruined mass,
Holds, and aye turns, a strange sand in his glass,
A sand scraped from the mould, brushed from the shroud
Of all passed things, mean, great, lowly, or proud.
Thus meting with the ashes of the dead
How hours of the living have quickly fled.
The sand runs, monarchs! the clepsydra weeps.
Wherefore? They see through future's gloomy deeps,
Through the church wall, into the catacomb,
And mark the change when thrones do graves become.

THE FIFTH SPHINX.

To swerve the earth seemed from its wonted path
When marched the Four of Asia in their wrath,
And when they were bound slaves to Cyrus' car,
The rivers shrank back from their banks afar.
"Who can this be," was Nineveh's appeal;
"Who dares to drag the gods at his car-wheel? "
The ground is still there that these wheel-rims tore--
The people and the armies are no more.

THE SIXTH SPHINX.

Never again Cambyses earth will tread.
He slept, and rotted, for his ghost had fled.
So long as sovereigns live, the subjects kneel,
Crouching like spaniels at their royal heel;
But when their might flies, they are shunned by all,
Save worms, which--human-like--still to them crawl
On Troy or Memphis, on Pyrrhus the Great,
Or on Psammeticus, alike falls fate.
Those who in rightful purple are arrayed,
The prideful vanquisher, like vanquished, fade.
Death grins as he the fallen man bestrides--
And less of faults than of his glories hides.

THE SEVENTH SPHINX.

The time is come for Belus' tomb to fall,
Long has been ruined its high granite wall;
And its cupola, sister of the cloud,
Has now to lowest mire its tall head bowed.
The herdsman comes to it to choose the stones
To build a hut, and overturns the bones,
From which he has just scared a jackal pack,
Waiting to gnaw them when he turns his back.
Upon this scene the night is doubly night,
And the lone passer vainly strains his sight,
Musing: Was Belus not buried near this spot?
The royal resting-place is now forgot.

THE EIGHTH SPHINX.

The inmates of the Pyramids assume
The hue of Rhamesis, black with the gloom.
A Jailer who ne'er needs bolts, bars, or hasps,
Is Death. With unawed hand a god he grasps,
He thrusts, to stiffen, in a narrow case,
Or cell, where struggling air-blasts constant moan;
Walling them round with huge, damp, slimy stone;
And (leaving mem'ry of bloodshed as drink,
And thoughts of crime as food) he stops each chink.

THE NINTH SPHINX.

Who would see Cleopatra on her bed?
Come in. The place is filled with fog like lead,
Which clammily has settled on the frame
Of her who was a burning, dazzling flame
To all mankind--who durst not lift their gaze,
And meet the brightness of her beauty's rays.