Monadnock through the Trees by Edwin Arlington Robinson

BEFORE there was in Egypt any sound

Of those who reared a more prodigious means

For the self-heavy sleep of kings and queens

Than hitherto had mocked the most renowned, -

Unvisioned here and waiting to be found,

Alone, amid remote and older scenes, / You loomed above ancestral evergreens

Before there were the first of us around.

And when the last of us, if we know how, / See farther from ourselves than we do now,

Assured with other sight than heretofore

That we have done our mortal best and worst, -

Your calm will be the same as when the first

Assyrians went howling south to war.