said,
And hoard within their portals dread
Some fearful secret there,
Which to the listening earth
She may not whisper forth.
Not even to the air!

Of awful wonders hid
In yonder dread Pyramid,
The home of magic fears;
Of chambers vast and lonely,
Watched by the Genii only,
Who tend their masters' long-forgotten biers,
And treasures that have shone
On cavern walls alone,
For thousand, thousand years.

Would she but tell. She knows
Of the old Pharaohs;
Could count the Ptolemies' long line;
Each mighty myth's original hath seen,
Apis, Anubis,--ghosts that haunt between
The bestial and divine,--
(Such he that sleeps in Philae,--he that stands
In gloom unworshipped, 'neath his rock-hewn lane,--
And they who, sitting on Memnonian sands,
Cast their long shadows o'er the desert plain:)
Hath marked Nitocris pass,
And Oxymandyas
Deep-versed in many a dark Egyptian wile,--
The Hebrew boy hath eyed
Cold to the master's bride;
And that Medusan stare hath frozen the smile
Of all her love and guile,
For whom the Caesar sighed,
And the world-loser died,--
The darling of the Nile.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Fergusson, "History of Architecture," vol. i. pp. 91, 92.

V.

THE RISE OF THEBES TO POWER, AND THE EARLY THEBAN KINGS.

Hitherto Egypt had been ruled from a site at the junction of the narrow
Nile valley with the broad plain of the Delta--a site sufficiently
represented by the modern Cairo. But now there was a shift of the seat
of power. There is reason to believe that something like a disruption of
Egypt into separate kingdoms took place, and that for a while several
distinct dynasties bore sway in different parts of the country.
Disruption was naturally accompanied by weakness and decline. The old
order ceased, and opportunity was offered for some new order--some new
power--to assert itself. The site on which it arose was one three
hundred and fifty miles distant from the ancient capital, or four
hundred and more by the river. Here, about lat. 26 deg., the usually narrow
valley of the Nile opens into a sort of plain or basin. The mountains on
either side of the river recede, as though by common consent, and leave
between themselves and the river's bank a broad amphitheatre, which in
each case is a rich green plain--an allu