lie within thy breast;
Age follows age; revering pilgrims come
From every clime to urge the same request,--
That thou wilt speak! Poor creatures of a day,
In calm disdain thou seest them die away:
O voiceless Sphinx!

Majestic Sphinx!
Thou crouchest by a sea
Whose fawn-hued wavelets clasp thy buried feet:
Whose desert-surface, petrified like thee,
Gleams white with sails of many an Arab fleet:
Whose tawny billows, surging with the storm,
Break on thy flanks, and overleap thy form;
Majestic Sphinx!

Eternal Sphinx!
The Pyramids are thine;
Their giant summits guard thee night and day,
On thee they look when stars in splendor shine,
Or while around their crests the sunbeams play:
Thine own coevals, who with thee remain
Colossal Genii of the boundless plain!
Eternal Sphinx!

YOUTH AND AGE

"I will gain a fortune," the young man cried;
"For Gold by the world is deified;
Hence, whether the means be foul or fair,
I will make myself a millionaire,
My single talent shall grow to ten!"
But an old man smiled, and asked "And then?"

"A peerless beauty," the young man said,
"Shall be the woman I choose to wed.
And men shall envy me my prize,
And women scan her with jealous eyes;"
And he looked annoyed, when once again
The old man smiled, and asked "And then?"

"I will build," he answered, "a home so fine,
That kings in their castles shall covet mine;
The rarest pictures shall clothe its walls,
And statues stand in its stately halls;
It shall lack no luxury known to men;"
But still the old man asked "And then?"

"I will play a role in Church or State
That all mankind shall acknowledge great;
I will win at last such brilliant fame,
That distant lands shall know my name,
For I can wield both sword and pen;"
But again the old man asked "And then?"

"Is your heart a stone," the young man cried,
"Hath all ambition within you died,
That nothing seems to you worth while?
What mean you by that sphinx-like smile?
Of what are you secretly thinking, when
You utter those mournful words,--'And then?'"

Gently the old man said "O youth,
The words I have spoken veil a truth
Learned only through the lapse of years,
And first discerned through a mist of tears;
For youth is full of illusions fair
Which manhood sees dissolve in air.

"Your millions will not make you blest,
They will rob you, instead, of peace and rest:
Your beautiful wife may be the prey
Of a treacherous friend or a