Yet mournful the contrast, without and within,
Here were purity, peace,—there were riot and sin!
The vast and magnificent banquetting room
Was of marble, Egyptian, in form and in gloom;
And around, wild and dark as a demon’s dread thought,
Strange shapes, full of terror, yet beauty, were wrought.
Th’ ineffable sorrow, that dwells in the face
Of the Sphynx, wore a soft and mysterious grace,
Dim, even amid the full flood of light poured
From a thousand high clustering lamps on the board;