Hermes Trismegistus

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.