The Sphinx

I swear to you that if I lived a thousand years

I could not be more crammed with dubious souvenirs.

There's no old chest of drawers bulging with deeds and bills,

Love-letters, locks of hair, novels, bad verses, wills,

That hides so many secrets as my wretched head; —

It's like a mausoleum, like a pyramid,

Holding more heaped unpleasant bones than Potter's Field;

I am a graveyard hated by the moon; revealed

Never by her blue light are those long worms that force

Into my dearest dead their blunt snouts of remorse.

— am an old boudoir, where roses dried and brown

Have given their dusty odor to the faded gown,

To the ridiculous hat, doubtless in other days

So fine, among the wan pastels and pale Bouchers.

Time has gone lame, and limps; and under a thick pall

Of snow the endless years efface and muffle all;

Till boredom, fruit of the mind's inert, incurious tree,

Assumes the shape and size of immortality.

Henceforth, O living matter, you are nothing more

Than the fixed heart of chaos, soft horror's granite core,

Than a forgotten Sphinx that in some desert stands,

Drowsing beneath the heat, half-hidden by the sands,

Unmarked on any map, — whose rude and sullen frown

Lights up a moment only when the sun goes down.