Still through Egypt's desert places
       &nbsp Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
       &nbsp Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
       &nbsp Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
       &nbsp Solemn, stony eyes.

But where are the old Egyptian
       &nbsp Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
       &nbsp Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
       &nbsp Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
       &nbsp Who their secrets held?

Where are now the many hundred
       &nbsp Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
       &nbsp Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
       &nbsp As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
       &nbsp Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
       &nbsp Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
       &nbsp Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
       &nbsp To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
       &nbsp In a land of dreams.

Was he one, or many, merging
       &nbsp Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
       &nbsp Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
       &nbsp Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
       &nbsp From unnumbered lakes.

By the Nile I see him wandering,
       &nbsp Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
       &nbsp Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
       &nbsp With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
       &nbsp Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
       &nbsp In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
       &nbsp A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
       &nbsp In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
       &nbsp Of Olympian song.

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
       &nbsp Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
       &nbsp Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
       &nbsp Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
       &nbsp Human and divine?

Trismegistus! three times greatest!
       &nbsp How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
       &nbsp Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
       &nbsp Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
       &nbsp Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
       &nbsp Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
       &nbsp Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
       &nbsp On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
       &nbsp Breathed, and was no more.