Egypt
How I have dwelt with you in dreams,So long, so intimately, that it seemsAs if you had borne me; thought I could not knowIt was so many thousands years ago!And in my gropings darkly undergroundThe long-lost memory at last is foundOf motherhood - you Mother of us all!And to my fellow-men I must recallThe memory too; that common motherhoodMay help to make the common brotherhood.Egypt! It lies there in the far-off past,Opening with depths profound and growths as vastAs the great valley of Yosemite;The birthplace out of darkness into day;The shaping matrix of the human mind;The Cradle and the Nursery of our kind.This was the land created from the flood,The land of Atum, made of the red mud,Where Num sat in his Teba throned on high,And saw the deluge once a year go by,Each brimming with the blessing that it brought,And by that water-way, in Egypt’s thought,The gods descended; but they never hurledThe Deluge that should desolate the world.There the vast hewers of the early timeBuilt, as if that way they would surely climbThe heavens, and left their labours without name -Colossal as their carelessness of fame -Sole likeness of themselves - that heavenwardFor ever look with statuesque regard,As if some Vision of the Eternal grownPetrific, was for ever fixed in stone!They watch the Moon re-orb, the Stars go round,And drew the Circle; Thought’s primordial bound.The Heavens looked into them with living eyesTo kindle starry thoughts in other skies,For us reflected in the image-scroll,That night by night the stars for aye unroll.The Royal Heads of Language bow them downTo lay in Egypt’s lap each borrowed crown.The glory of Greece was but the After-glowOf her forgotten greatness lying low;Her hieroglyphics buried dark as night,Or coal-deposits filled with future light,Are mines of meaning; by their light we seeThro’ many an overshadowing mystery.The nursing Nile is living Egypt still,And as her low-lands with its freshness fill,And heave with double-breasted bounteousness,So doth the old Hidden Source of mind yet blessThe nations; secretly she brought to birth,And Egypt still enriches all the earth.(Gerald Massey, 1881)
