Explore "The Suppressed Poems" by Alfred Tennyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood / In the midnoon the glory of old Rhodes, / A perfect Idol, with profulgent brows / Far sheening down the purple seas to those / Who sailed from Mizraim underneath the star / Named of the Dragon and between whose limbs / Of brassy vastness broad-blown Argosies / Drave into haven? Yet endure unscathed / Of changeful cycles the great Pyramids / Broad-based amid the fleeting sands, and sloped / Into the slumberous summer noon; but where, / Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks / Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned? / Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile? / Thy shadowy Idols in the solitudes, / Awful Memnonian countenances calm / Looking athwart the burning flats, far off / Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge / Journeying southward?
Where are thy monuments / Piled by the strong and sunborn Anakim / Over their crowned brethren [Greek: ON] and [Greek: ORE]? / Thy Memnon, when his peaceful lips are kissed / With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes / Flow over the Arabian bay, no more / Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn / Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile / By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone down: / The Pharaohs are no more: somewhere in death / They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips, / Wrapped round with spiced cerements in old grots / Rock-hewn and sealed for ever.