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The Great Pyramid By Herman Melville |
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Your masonry-and is it man's? More like some Cosmic artisan's. Your courses as in strata rise, Beget you do a blind surmise Like Grampians. Far slanting up your sweeping flank Arabs with Alpine goats may rank, And there they find a choice of passes Even like to dwarfs that climb the masses Of glaciers blank. Shall lichen in your crevice fit? Nay, sterile all and granite-knit: Weather nor weather-stain ye rue, But aridly you cleave the blue As lording it. Morn's vapour floats beneath your peak, Kites skim your side with pinion weak; To sand-storms battering, blow on blow, Raging to work your overthrow, You-turn the cheek. All elements unmoved you stem, Foursquare you stand and suffer them: Time's future infinite you dare, While, for the past, 'tis you that wear Eld's diadem. Slant from your inmost lead the caves And labyrinths rumoured. These who braves And penetrates (old palmers said) Comes out afar on deserts dead And, dying, raves. Craftsmen, in dateless quarries dim, Stones formless into form did trim, Usurped on Nature's self with Art, And bade this dumb I AM to start, Imposing him. | |||||||||||||
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