Sphinx-Money
Where Pyramids and temple-wrecks are piled
Confusedly on camel-coloured sands,
And the mute Arab motionlessly stands,
Like some swart god who never wept or smiled,—
I picked up mummy relics of the wild
(And sea-shells once with clutching baby hands),
And felt a wafture from old Motherlands,
And all the morning wonder of a Child
To find Sphinx-money. So the Beduin calls
Small fossils of the waste. Nay, poet’s gold;
‘Twill give thee entrance to those rites of old,
When hundred-gated Thebes, with storied walls,
Gleamed o’er her Plain, and vast processions rolled
To Amon-Ra through Karnak’s pillared halls.
