The place the mummied Kings of Egypt,wrapped in linen fold on fold,
Couched for ages of their coffins, topped with crowns of dusky gold,

Lie in subterranean chambers, biding to the day of doom,
Counterfeit life’s hole semblance in every mazy mountain tomb,

Grisly of their gilded coffins, mocking masks of pores and skin and bone,
But stay in change unchanging, balking Nature of her personal;

Mured in mighty Mausoleums, walled in from the night time and day,
Lo, the mortal Kings of Egypt maintain immortal Demise at bay.

For – so spake the Kings of Egypt – these colossal ones whose hand
Held the peoples from Pitasa to the Kheta’s conquered land;

Who, with flash and conflict of lances and warfare chariots, stormed and received
Many a city of stiff-necked Syria to high-towering Askalon:

“We’ve got been the trustworthy stewards of the deathless gods on excessive;
We’ve got constructed them starry temples beneath the starry sky.

“We’ve got smitten insurgent nations, as a toddler is whipped with rods:
We the residing carnation of imperishable gods.

“We could undergo Demise to trample us to nothingness? and should
We be scattered, because the whirlwind blows in regards to the desert mud?

“No! Demise shall not dare come close to us, nor Corruption shall not lay
Palms upon our sacred our bodies, incorruptible as day.

“Allow us to put a bit and bridle, and rein in Time’s headlong course;
Allow us to trip him by way of the ages as a grasp rides his horse.

“On the altering earth unchanging allow us to bide until Time shall finish,
Until, reborn in blest Osiris, mortal with immortal mix.”

Sure, so spake the Kings of Egypt, they whose lightest phrase was regulation,
At whose nod the far-off nations cowered, stricken dumb with awe.

And Destiny left the haughty rulers to work out their monstrous doom;
And, embalmed with myrrh and ointments, they had been carried to the tomb;

By way of the gate of Bab-el-Molouk, the place the sulpher hill lie naked,
The place no inexperienced factor casts a shadow within the midday’s super glare;

The place the unveiled Blue of heaven in its naked depth
Weighs upon the awe-struck spirit with the world’s immensity;

By way of the Vale of Desolation, the place no beast or chicken attracts breath,
To the Coffin Hills of Tuat – the Metropolis of Demise.

Down – down – down into the darkness, the place, on both hand, dread destiny
Within the semblance of a serpent, watches by the dolorous gate;

Down – down – down into the darkness, the place no gleam of solar or star
Sheds its purifying radiance from the residing world afar;

The place in labyrinthine windings, darkly hidden, down and down,-
Proudly on his marble pillow, with previous Egypt’s double crown,

And his mien of chilly commandment, greedy nonetheless his workers of state,
Rests the mightiest of the Pharaohs, whom the world surnamed the nice.

Swathed in positive Sidonian linen, crossed fingers folded on the breast,
There the mummied Kings of Egypt lie inside every painted chest.

And upon their dusky foreheads Pleiades of flaming gems,
Glowing by way of the nether darkness, flash from luminous diadems.

The place is Memphis? Like a mirage, melted into empty air:
However these royal gems but sparkle richly on their raven hair.

The place is Thebes in all her glory, together with her gates of overwhelmed gold?
The place Syene, or that marvel, Heliopolis of previous?

The place is Edfu? The place Abydos? The place these pillared cities of yore
Whose auroral temples glittered by the Nile’s thick-peopled shore?

Gone as evanescent cloudlands, alplike within the afterglow;
However these Kings maintain quick their our bodies of 4 thousand years in the past.

Sealed up of their Mausoleums, within the bowels of the hills,
There they conceal from dissolution and Deaths swiftly grinding mills.

Scattering hearth, Uraeus serpents guard the Tombs’ super gate;
Whereas Troth holds the trembling stability, weighs the warmth and seals its destiny.

And a large number of mummies within the swaddling garments of loss of life,
Ferried o’er the sullen river, on and on nonetheless hasteneth.

And round them and above them, blazoned on the rocky partitions,
Topped with stars, enlaced by serpents, in divine processionals,

Ibis-headed, jackal-featured, vulture-hooded, move on excessive,
Gods on gods by way of Time’s views – pilgrims of Eternity.

There, revealed by fitful flashes, in a gloom which may be felt,
Wild Chimeras flash from darkness, glittering like Orion’s belt.

And on excessive, o’er shining waters, of their barks the gods sail by,
Within the Sunboat and within the Moonboat, rowed throughout the rose-hued sky.

Evening, that was earlier than creation, watches sphinxlike, starred with eyes,
And the hours and days are passing, and the years and centuries.

However these mummied Kings of Egypt, photos of a parished race,
Lie, of busy Demise forgotten, face by immemorial face.

Although the fantastic solar above them, burning on the bare plain,
Garments the empty wilderness with the golden, glowing grain;

Although the balmy Moon above them, floating within the milky Blue,
Fills the empty wilderness with a silver fall of dew;

Although life comes and flies unresting, just like the shadow which a dove
Casts upon the Sphinx, in passing, for a second from above;-

Nonetheless these mummied Kings of Egypt, wrapped in linen, fold on fold,
Bide by way of ages of their coffins, topped with crowns of dusky gold.

Had the solar as soon as brushed them flippantly, or a breath of air, they need to
Instantaneously have crumbled into evanescent mud.

Pale and passive of their prisons, they’ve conquered, chained to loss of life;
And their lineaments look residing now as once they final drew breath!

Have they conquered? Oh, the pity of these Kings inside their tombs,
Locked in stony isolation in these petrifying glooms!

Immobile the place all is movement in a rolling Universe,
Heaven, by answering their prayer, turned it to a lethal curse.

Allow them to mounted the place all is fluid in a world of star-winged skies;
The place, in myriad transformations, all issues move and nothing dies;

Nothing dies however what’s tethered, saved when Time would set it free,
To meet Thought’s craving stress upward by way of Eternity.

Mathilde Blind
1847-1896

Supply: The Common Anthology, edited by Richard Garnett, The Clarke Firm, restricted, London, 1899, Vol. I, pgs. 116-119.