Sphinx-Money

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Where Pyramids and temple-wrecks are piled
 Confusedly on camel-coloured sands,
 And the mute Arab motionlessly stands,
Like some swart god who never wept or smiled,-
I picked up mummy relics of the wild
 (And sea-shells once with clutching baby hands),
 And felt a wafture from old Motherlands,
And all the morning wonder of a Child

To find Sphinx-money. So the Beduin calls
 Small fossils of the waste. Nay, poet's gold;
 'Twill give thee entrance to those rites of old,
When hundred-gated Thebes, with storied walls,
 Gleamed o'er her Plain, and vast processions rolled
To Amon-Ra through Karnak's pillared halls.

© Mathilde Blind