Poetical works of Mathilde Blind/To the Obelisk during the Great Frost, 1881

by Mathilde Blind

 

TO THE OBELISK
DURING THE GREAT FROST, 1881.

Thou sign-post of the Desert! Obelisk,
Once fronting in thy monumental pride
Egypt's fierce sun, that blazing far and wide,
Sheared her of tree and herb, till like a disk
Her waste stretched shadowless, and fought with risk
To those who with their beasts of burden hied
Across the seas of sand until they spied
Tliy pillar, and their flagging hearts grew brisk:

Now reared beside our Thames so wintry gray,
Where blocks of ice drift with the drifting stream,
Thou risest o'er the alien prospect! Say,
Yon dull, blear, rayless orb whose lurid gleam
Tinges the snow-draped ships and writhing steam,
Is this the sun which fired thine orient day?