Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich / [by Thomas Bailey Aldrich] [electronic text]

IV.
EGYPT.

"EGYPT." Page 203.

FANTASTIC Sleep is busy with my eyes: I seem in some waste solitude to stand Once ruled of Cheops: upon either hand A dark illimitable desert lies, Sultry and still— a realm of mysteries; A wide-browed Sphinx, half buried in the sand, With orbless sockets stares across the land, The woefulest thing beneath these brooding skies, Where all is woeful, weird-lit vacancy. 'T is neither midnight, twilight, nor moonrise. Lo! while I gaze, beyond the vast sand-sea The nebulous clouds are downward slowly drawn, And one bleared star, faint-glimmering like a bee, Is shut in the rosy outstretched hand of Dawn.