The Heretic in the Temple
Lone did I go within the ancient place,
With hushèd voice, and slow and reverent tread;
While on the walls my wondering eyes in awe
Did learn the glories of the mighty dead.
The sculptured stones here pictured well the pride
Of their great king, his wars, his victories;
There, with his club he smites a thousand foes,
Here, kneels to Ammon 'neath the sacred trees.
There in procession walks, and here doth ride
With poisèd spear in fury to the chase;
Here, counts the severed hands of Libians dead,
There, storms the fortress of a Hittite race.
‘Dost sleep, Rameses, in the underworld,
Forgot, unhonoured, 'mid the countless dead,
Or bowest still in kingly consequence,
To ghostly subjects, thy unconquered head?
‘These noble walls, white pages of thy past,
Where once thy living eyes so often gazed
As mine to-day; if Isis so inclines
Canst thou still see—rejoicing in their praise?
‘How counts it for thee in the underworld
If thou but sleepest, to this glory blind?
If thou dost walk amid the shadowy dead,
How holdest all that thou hast left behind?’
And while I spoke there came a little voice
From where the crown of Rameses did rest
Upon the carven brow, and ‘Cheep!’ it cried,
And as I stared a sparrow stood confessed.
No eagle here of Jove’s Celestial Brood,
To comment on the tragedy of thrones,
Nor dove of Venus, loosed from her fair breast,
To croon its pity by the crumbling stones.
Nor from the desert did some lone wolf prowl,
To keen upon the mystery of time,
Untamed, unchanging, from the slipping sands,
He, with his ancient lineage, still sublime.
A house-top sparrow this, that dared to speak,
With pert indifference on the fate of power,
From pale decay of old magnificence,
And ‘Cheep!’ he cried from out his nesting bower.
‘Thou hand’s-hold of brown feathers, thou dost speak
Most wisely now, for in this ancient place
Who reads not here man’s pomp and pride and fall,
The swift oblivion of a splendid race?’
‘Rameses, King! dead as thy gods are dead,
See, here I kneel, unshadowed by thy might,
Nor fear thy guardians of the underworld,
A Higher Host has put their shades to flight.
‘For me, the promises of earth and sky,
The golden heavens, shimmering afar,
Death, resurrection, and the angels hold
The Gates of Paradise for me ajar.’
Then, by the crown of Rameses, the king,
The sparrow fed its mate, then came to peep,
‘How dost thou hold the Christian promise, then,
Thou soulless one?’ and ‘Cheep!’ it answered, ‘Cheep!’
Then sudden fell the dusk in that swift way
It hath in Eastern skies, and shone the stars,
And slow the dead moon swung across the skies,
And crimson flamed the dying planet Mars.
I struck the moaning camel to its pace,
Once did he trip upon some mummied thing
That from the ground did seem to force its way,
Out from the past and Time’s enfolding wing.
Sharp to my face a grey blown handful came
Of the enduring sand that east and west
Creeps ever on, so slow, but yet so sure,
Across the world, in its death-seeking quest.
