…from the quills of dead white poets
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784 – 1859)
It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in all that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,-
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world’s great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weights on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
‘Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.