Debemur morti nos nostraque!
THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT[32]
A Dialogue. Written in 1770.
Scene.—Egypt. Persons.—Traveller, Genius, Time.
Traveller
Where are those famed piles of human grandeur,
Those sphinxes, pyramids, and Pompey's pillar,
That bid defiance to the arm of Time—
Tell me, dear Genius: for I long to see them.
Genius
At Alexandria rises Pompey's pillar,
Whose birth is but of yesterday, compar'd
With those prodigious fabricks that you see
O'er yonder distant plain—upon whose breast
Old Nile hath never roll'd his swelling streams,
The only plain so privileg'd in Egypt.
These pyramids may well excite your wonder,
They are of most remote antiquity,
Almost co-eval with those cloud-crown'd hills
That westward from them rise—'twas the same age
That saw old Babel's tower aspiring high,
When first the sage Egyptian architects
These ancient turrets to the heavens rais'd;—
But Babel's tower is gone, and these remain!
Traveller
Old Rome I thought unrivall'd in her years,
At least the remnants that we find of Rome,
But these, you tell me, are of older date.