I knew they were Accursed so remote were these nameless desert ruins Crumbling and inarticulate the debris of its collapsed walls was Nearly hidden by the sands of the uncounted ages It must have been thus before the first stones of Memphis were laid And the bricks of Babylon unbaked Fear spoke from the age worn stones This desolate survivor of the Deluge This crumbling antidiluvial ancestor Of the Eldest Pyramid
Only the grim brooding desert Gods Knew what really took place here What indescribable struggles and bloodshed Awoke some distant throng of condemned spirits And broke the tomblike silence of these crumbled Time ravaged remains these night black ruins Of some vanguished and buried Temple of Belial
But as the Night wind diad away Above the desert rim rose the Blazing edge of the morning sun Which in my fevered state I swore that from some remote depth there came a Great crash of metal Like a great Bronze gate Clanging shut whose reverberations swelled out To hail the rising Sun as Memnon hails in From the banks of the Nile