To the Mummy of the Cliff-Dweller: A Poem

gm^r^Sft?: What! Did thine eyes once look upon the sun — Thou who didst lie those ages on the stones? O wan and mummied, gaunt and awful one, Can it be truth that life was in these bones? And thou, how long ago, crouched by the fire, Where long thy tomb was in the high cliff-cave? Didst love a mate, of child wast thou the sire, To all the passions wast thou once a slave? What thoughts once dwelt in that now withered brain; Of earth, what things were last within thy sight? Didst thou know hope and fear and joy and pain; In peace didst die, or in the savage fight? We question thee, but question thee in vain — No answer comes from out the ancient night!

//. And from those stony lips once counsel came — The words that held perhaps the tribal fate? But what thy deeds, O now we cannot name, We know not that for which they thought thee great! And warriors did follow at thy yell — When swung that ax of flint within thy hand? No records on the rocks thy prowess tell, Naught that thou didst is known in all the land. Yet this we gather, many called thee chief; The desert sands did long thy treasures hide; That Time, the Reaper, bound thee in his sheaf; The ancient tale is thine— he lived, he died: A mortal thou, and so thy days were brief. Can we boast more? Behold the end of Pride!