--
The finger-tips of Alexander's arm--
The plethorite of the Augustan age--
The gilt that margins all the tapestries
Down through middle ages; and the charm
That lends a mellow fragrance to the page
Of her, the Island Queen, whose arm meets arm
In the embrace of earth, her borders refuge from avenging harm.

A journey into Egypt, with their flocks before,
And peaceful conquests back, an opening door
To vast historic truths, a Niobe
Moaning her children's travail in advance,
A restless nomad people, like the sea,
Stirred by involuntary force, whose billows dance
To music of the spheres, stern Autocrat, and yet a slave to
its own mastery.

SOJOURN IN EGYPT.

O Egypt! how shall we approach thy face?
How steal from thy dumb lips one scrap of song?
Thou stand'st alone, and sendest from thy place
One word, that human lips have shaped for thee,
To seal thy mighty arch with "mystery."
Time calls his children 'round him, and they each
Give answer to their names; gray Troy and Greece
Pour out the lesson their dumb lips would teach,
Carthage, Phoenicia, Parthia and Rome
Clothe death with all the eloquence of speech;
And each form linklets of an unbroke chain.
But they are youthful; in perspective dim
As if unmoved with either joy or pain.
With arms enfolded, and with eye all fixed,
A silent portal in the track of time.
In the rough surge of nations still unmixed,
Where the great fathers left thee in the Sphinx,
And heaped the sands upon thy broken links,
Thou dost look down the ages to defy
Tradition, inspiration, and all future progeny.

She sleeps as they advance; their lowing kine
And noisy herds before them, and with the flute
And siren song, they win, as with old wine,
Their way into the slumbering and the mute
Endormir of old Nile; but Egypt wakes,
And breast to breast, opposes their advance.
In vain against the shepherd crew, she breaks
Her ill-spent arrows, shattered every lance,
And Mizraim's sons the rod of empire yield
To sons of Lud; they spread their many tents
On Nile's unequaled garniture of field,
The one discordant note in her great eloquence.

How Nature heals wha