Do the voices of forty fled centuries sound on the breeze that breathes by?
Bear they meanings the Frank would acclaim, or the latter-day Hebrew approve?
Those Voices are hard to interpret, that Sphinx is not easy to move.
It would speak with the music of Memnon, in Abbas's ears, did it say
The Frank shall return whence he came, and the Briton betake him away.
Yet Ismail the shrewd, the unscrupulous, knew what young Abbas must learn,
That a Government strong to subsist, which no blast of intrigue can o'erturn,
Is not shapen of shifting Nile sands, broken reeds, which, like Egypt of old,
But pierce through the hand that shall rest on them. Abbas the boy may be bold,
With a thoughtless boy-boldness, but is he the Khedive keen Ismail foresaw,