Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By The Bird-Bride: A Volume of Ballads and Sonnets (1889). II. The Smile of All-Wisdom

Graham R. Thomson (Rosamund Marriott Watson) (1860–1911)

SEEKING the Smile of All-Wisdom one wandered afar

(He that first fashioned the Sphinx, in the dust of the past):

Looked on the faces of sages, of heroes of war;

Looked on the lips of the lords of the uttermost star,

Magi, and kings of the earth—nor had found it at last,

Save for the word of a slave, hoary-headed and weak,

Trembling, that clung to the hem of his garment, and said,

‘Master, the least of your servants has found what you seek:

(Pardon, O Master, if all without wisdom I speak!)

Sculpture the smile of your Sphinx from the lips of the Dead!’

Rising, he followed the slave to a hovel anear;

Lifted the mat from the doorway and looked on the bed.

‘Nay, thou hast spoken aright, thou hast nothing to fear:

That which I sought thou hast found, Friend; for, lo, it is here!—

Surely the Smile of the Sphinx is the Smile of the Dead!’

Aye, on the stone lips of old, on the clay of to-day,

Tranquil, inscrutable, sweet with a quiet disdain,

Lingers the Smile of All-Wisdom, still seeming to say,

‘Fret not, O Friend, at the turmoil—it passeth away;

Waste not the Now in the search of a Then that is vain:

‘Hushed in the infinite dusk at the end shall ye be,

Feverish, questioning spirits that travail and yearn,

Quenched in the fulness of knowledge and peaceful as we:

Lo, we have lifted the veil—there was nothing to see!

Lo, we have looked on the scroll—there was nothing to learn!’