Being a king of Egypt, he had found
Egyptian silence in the rock-hewn hill,
Too deep for rain that patters on the ground,
Or shrieking wind that shimmers where it will;
Chambered he slept as far from lightning-shaft
As creak of water-wheel ... deep, dark, and still ...
For Egypt, in her stern, huge handicraft,
Had made even Silence an Invincible. . . .
But over Nile a blast of light there broke
From lands upbuilt of Egypt's bones and shrines,
Glinting old seas, unbeaconed then, uncut;
And life's new sounds assailed him, with red smoke
Whirled from the sirens of the mills and mines,
While San Francisco's newsboys cried, " King Tut! "

Estranging Time that bilks us of our best
Now cleaves us from what sanctities we save:
Had he but yesterday been laid to rest,
What prowling hands had dared ransack his grave?
For we that torture life still guard the dead;
Even flowers we spare, and sod is shovel-proof;
Not the fierce Norseman dug his foe from bed,
Unless the grim ghost walked or rode the roof.
But this sarcophagus in Pharaoh's tomb
We now unlid, and show, black, shriveled, taut,
The very face upturned of one to whom
Death had peculiar subtilty for thought —
So long ago his duties, joys, and doom,
The curio's all in all, the man is naught.

So long ago? — Mirror his collarette;
Give your young child his childhood glove to fondle;
Trouble this bowl with rose or violet,
This alabaster bowl of lotus-handle;
Mull, with his ivory cane, by Thames or Po;
Hum to those strings a song of love or flowers:
Ours are his modes and moods of life — although
His hope to conquer death was more than ours.
So long ago? — The bisons, carved by man,
Uncavern a hollow laughter down the gale
From Altamira and from Montespan;
While the shag spectre in Neanderdale,
Towering behind the Magdalenian,
Makes us and Egypt but a single tale.

A tale begun to end. . . . So long ago? ...
We count from bud to frost, from seed to crop,
Not from the pot-hole on the mountain-top
To stream that scooped it, now so far below.
We calendar vast Time by fall of states
Or birth of gods, — yet from the rocks we bore,
By Gobi's dunes, the eggs of Dinosaur,
The year we found this king behind the gates.
Builders of house and hedge, a race we are
Between the Ice-to-come and Ice forspent,
Who plant a lava-field or ocean-bed;
We coal our engines under many a star
Whose blaze had started down the firmament
Before the boy Tutankhamen was bred.

So earth and starlight bring him, heart and home,
Near as lost faces dreams reveal unbid;
Even though between his roads by pyramid,
Pylon, and sphinx and ours by spire and dome,
Between great Karnak and great airodrome,
Between his rent Papyrus-of-the-Dead
And all the Liturgies that now be read,
Lies that wide ridge — debris of Greece and Rome.
The skirted, big-eyed Blacks with grip on mace
Stood guard not well. We came, we saw, we took ...
But nearer than earth can bring him or abyss,
Art, man's one surety over Time and Place,
Will bring him yet. . . . Lay by your hates, and look,
O World, where Beauty is your armistice:

The panel of his coronation throne
Here gleams with glass, faience, and sheeted gold,
And lapis lazuli, immortal stone;
Showing (by boss and inlay) as of old:
The palace hall, the pillars hung with flowers,
And frieze of royal cobras, while the sun
Through opened ceilings sends the morning hours,
As God of Egypt and of Ikhnaton.
Here sits Tutankhamen in cushioned chair,
His elbow on its back, a palm on knee,
Relaxed from Hunt and Sacrifice and War;
While his unwidowed queen, in hooded hair,
From unguent-cup anoints confidingly
His tawny shoulder with her fingers four.