Pyramids of Giza

Lo! tow'rds the West, where skies are blue and clear,
Their bald, dark heads what giant structures rear?
High o'er the Nile, and Gizeh's waste of sand,
They look around, dread guardians of the land.
Stupendous works of Mizraim's* early kings!
Where Time hath dropped his scythe and furled his wings,
The hoary god for ages standing by,
Watching their unchanged summits pierce the sky,
As nearer Gizeh's wondrous piles we draw,
What stirs within us?— sadness blent with awe:
To gaze above, their massy outlines trace,
To lean, a less than pigmy, at their base;
To muse on that vast crowd, in other years
Worn with their toil, and weeping slavery's tears,
That one man's mortal frame might brave decay,
One tyrant's memory should not pass away —
How fills the soul with thoughts too deep for words!
How dark a scene the pictured past affords!
But while we mourn the follies of our kind,
How glorious seems all-conquering, daring mind!
These piles at once grand, matchless, and sublime,
Yet proofs of darkness, monuments of crime?