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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE GREAT PYRAMID, by HERMAN MELVILLE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Your masonry - and is it man's Last Line: Imposing him. Subject(s): Pyramids | |||
Your masonry -- and is it man's? More like some Cosmic artisan's. Your courses as in strata rise, Beget you do a blind surmise Like Grampians. Far slanting up your sweeping flank Arabs with Alpine goats may rank, And there they find a choice of passes Even like to dwarfs that climb the masses Of glaciers blank. Shall lichen in your crevice fit? Nay, sterile all and granite-knit: Weather nor weather-strain ye rue, But aridly you cleave the blue As lording it. Morn's vapor floats beneath your peak, Kites skim your side with pinion weak; To sand-storms battering, blow on blow, Raging to work your overthrow, You -- turn the cheek. All elements unmoved you stem, Foursquare you stand and suffer them: Time's future infinite you dare, While, for the past, 'tis you that wear Eld's diadem. Slant from your inmost lead the caves And labyrinths rumored. These who braves And penetrates (old palmers said) Comes out afar on deserts dead And, dying, raves. Craftsmen, in dateless quarries dim, Stones formless into form did trim, Usurped on Nature's self with Art, And bade this dumb I AM to start, Imposing him. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE EVENING OF THE PYRAMIDS by NORMAN DUBIE SONNET TO MAN-MADE GRANDEUR by JOHN UPDIKE TRUMMERFRAUEN (THE RUBBLE-WOMEN) by ELEANOR WILNER PELTERS OF PYRAMIDS by RICHARD HENGIST (HENRY) HORNE THE SCARAB by PATRICK REGINALD CHALMERS THE SONG OF THE PYRAMID-BUILDERS by HARRY HIBBARD KEMP PYRAMIDS by LLOYD FRANK MERRELL THE WRITER by JOHN COWPER POWYS DREAM O' NILE by CHARLES V. H. ROBERTS FORMERLY A SLAVE' (AN IDEALIZED PORTRAIT, BY E. VEDDER) by HERMAN MELVILLE THE COMING STORM' (A PICTURE BY R. S. GIFFORD) by HERMAN MELVILLE A DIRGE FOR MCPHERSON; KILLED IN FRONT OF ATLANTA by HERMAN MELVILLE |
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