Author: Alexander Copland

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13: 9781230278094

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1834 edition. Excerpt: ... THE MUMMY AWAKED. I. Look up, dark Mummy; you're among the living, Who fain would hear your antiquarian lore; If breath you have, strange tales you might be giving Of what befel on Nilus" banks of yore. Before your eyelids felt death's cheerless sleep; Or must you still his secrets closely keep? II. You had at Thebes a far fam'd wide Necropolis,1 Where kings and queens lay wrapt in rich perfume, Did not your dead once make it their metropolis, When you were laid in strangely painted room? Are you aware that you're again in light, That waking eyes may stare at such a sight? III. I3 this the likeness of your living face, So quaintly carv'd upon your coffin lid? It has not quite our lineaments of grace, But what was grace with you from us is hid Ev'n now grace differs in each diff'rent clime, "What did the beaux think of it in your time? IV. How did they spice you into an immortal?--And yet 'twould little serve us if you tell; For as you are, you'll never reach heaven's portal, So dust to dust perhaps is just as well: Unless the soul be caught before it start, But this I fancy was far past their art.2 Embalming now is little cared about, And bodies decompose as is their nature; Yet now we know that all shall hear the shout Which is again to give man form and stature! Without the slightest aid from gums or spices; Then happy they who here took good advices. VI. What wast thou, Mummy, in thy waking day, Before they laid you in this painted box? What do these mystic hieroglyphics say? Something, I doubt, that's not quite orthodox. Or were they only meant to tell your history, Without a word of dark and heathen mystery? VII. Perhaps you were a nut-brown laughing maid, With rosy lips and eyes so sweetly beaming; Have courted been, and heard what...