The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 3.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch,
     As Egypt's statues cold,
In the adytum of the sacred book
     Now stands that marvel old.

‘Lo, God is great! ’ the simple Moslem says.
     We seek the ancient date,
Turn the dry scroll, and make that living phrase
     A dead one: ‘God was great! ’

And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's wells,
     We dream of wonders past,
Vague as the tales the wandering Arab tells,
     Each drowsier than the last.

O fools and blind! Above the Pyramids
     Stretches once more that hand,
And tranceed Egypt, from her stony lids,
     Flings back her veil of sand.

And morning-smitten Memnon, singing, wakes;
     And, listening by his Nile,
O'er Ammon's grave and awful visage breaks
     A sweet and human smile.

Not, as before, with hail and fire, and call
     Of death for midnight graves,
But in the stillness of the noonday, fall
     The fetters of the slaves.