Page:The poetical works of James Thomson (1895), Volume 2.djvu/14

 4 As Memphis and the hundred-gated Thebes,

Sais and Denderah of Isis queen ;

Have grown because I fed them with full life,

And flourish only while I feed them still.

For if I stint my fertilising flood,

Gaunt famine reaps among the sons of men

Who have not corn to reap for all they sowed,

And blight and languishment are everywhere ;

And when I have withdrawn or turned aside

To other realms my ever-flowing streams,

The old realms withered from their old renown,

The sands came over them, the desert-sands

Incessantly encroaching, numberless

Beyond my water-drops, and buried them,

And all is silence, solitude, and death,

Exanimate silence while the waste winds howl

Over the sad immeasurable waste.

Dusk memories haunt me of an infinite past,

Ages and cycles brood above my springs,

Though I remember not my primal birth.

So ancient is my being and august,

I know not anything more venerable ;

Unless, perchance, the vaulting skies that hold

The sun and moon and stars that shine on me ;

The air that breathes upon me with delight ;

And Earth, All-Mother, all-beneficent,

Who held her mountains forth like opulent breasts