12. Monadnock Through the Trees

BEFORE there was in Egypt any sound

Of those who reared a more prodigious means

For the self-heavy sleep of kings and queens

Than hitherto had mocked the most renowned,—

Unvisioned here and waiting to be found,

Alone, amid remote and older scenes,

You loomed above ancestral evergreens

Before there were the first of us around.

And when the last of us, if we know how,

See farther from ourselves than we do now,

Assured with other sight than heretofore

That we have done our mortal best and worst,—

Your calm will be the same as when the first

Assyrians went howling south to war.