Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SPHINX WHAT is her silence saying, As she peers from her stony eyes, Creature of massive sternness, Woman of monstrous size ? Ever the ages ask it Of the Deity of the Sands, And the Spirit of Egypt answers, The ancient one of the lands : " Drought is my old-time menace, Rain brings my happy while, I blossom forth like a garden With the flooding of the Nile. "It means good grain for my people, Yea, life for my maids and men ; My kings in their great hewn sepulchres, E'en they grow joyful then. " In the Sign of the Lion stately, In the Sign of the Virgin too, Do the waters come upwelling, And the fields turn fair to view. " So of old my servants builded The Sphinx; she rose amain, A shape half beast, half human, Above the burning plain ; " For a sure, eternal token The Sphinx Of reverence and praise, A sacrifice to Father Nile Done in the elder days. "And if, in Time's later lapses, Innumerous aliens come To guess at her mystic semblance, And her front seems riddlesome, " My race will comprehend her, Their goddess, and laud her high In her worship of the waters Beneath a rainless sky." CITIES OF ELD ["N the Orient uplands afar, 1 Beyond the roof of the world, Strange buried cities are, Where over the winds have whirled And the Sky's bleak stormings swirled For century-sweeps of time. They lie deep hid in the slime, Or frore in their ancient shroud, Careless of clear or cloud, — But dimly imagined of man. There once the opulent East, With sumptuous caravan And blithe bazar and feast, Rejoiced in the gifts of life ; And love allured, and strife Was wine to the conquering strong. There women with ardent eyes Drew souls to sacrifice, And the day of work seemed long T...