Out of desert wilds, in golden splendor,
Rise and flash thy crimson face, eternal--
Across the wastes of shifting, century sands;
Again is mirrored in my sighing soul
The lofty temples and bastioned walls
Of Memphis, Balback, Nineveh, Babylon--
Gone from the earth like vapor from old Nile,
When thy noonday beams lick up its waters!
Hark! I hear again the vanished voices
Of lofty Memnon, where proud pagan priests
Syllable the matin hour, uttering
Prophecies from Jupiter and Apollo--
To devotees deluded, then as now,
By astronomical, selfish fakirs,
Who pretend claim to heavenly agency
And power over human souls divine.
Poor bamboozled man; know God never yet
Empowered any one of his truant tribe
To ride with a creed rod, image of Himself;
And thou, oh Sol, giver of light and heat,
Speed the hour when man, out of superstition
Shall leap into the light of pure reason,
Only believing in everlasting Truth!_

In a short time we crossed the sands of the desert and interviewed the
Sphynx, but with that battered, solemn countenance, wrinkled by the winds
and sands of ages, those granite lips still refused to give up the secrets
of its stony heart, or tell us the mysteries of buried antiquity.

We were soon again in the cabin of the Albion, sailing away to Athens,
where we anchored for two days.

William and myself ran hourly risk of breaking our legs and necks among the
classic ruins of Athenian genius, where Plato, Socrates, Aristotle,
Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Zeno, Solon,
Themestocles, Leonidas, Philip and Alexander had lived and loved in their
glorious, imperishable careers.

We went on top of Mars Hill, and climbed to the top of the ruined
Acropolis, disturbing a few lizards, spiders, bats, rooks and pigeons that
made their homes where the eloquence of Greece once ruled the world.

William made a move to strike one of his accustomed dramatic attitudes, but
I "pulled him off," remarking that he could not, in an impromptu way, do
justice to the occasion, and intimated that when he arrived at the Red Lion
in London, he could write up Cleopatra and Antony, and the ten-years' siege
of Troy, with Helen, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Achilles, Pandarus, Paris,
Troilus, Cressida and Hector as star performers in the plays.

It was not very often that I interfered with William in his personal
movements and asp