Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

IV. Egypt

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

FANTASTIC Sleep is busy with my eyes:

I seem in some waste solitude to stand

Once ruled of Cheops: upon either hand

A dark, illimitable desert lies,

Sultry and still,—a realm of mysteries;

A wide-browed Sphinx, half buried in the sand,

With orbless sockets stares across the land,

The wofulest thing beneath these brooding skies

Where all is woful, weird-lit vacancy.

’T is neither midnight, twilight, nor moonrise.

Lo! while I gaze, beyond the vast sand-sea

The nebulous clouds are downward slowly drawn,

And one bleared star, faint-glimmering like a bee,

Is shut i’ the rosy outstretched hand of Dawn.