The Lamp (1931)

VI. The Lamp

We found the lamp inside those hollow cliffs

Whose chiseled sign no priest in Thebes could read,

And from whose caverns frightened hieroglyphs

Warned every creature of earth’s breed.

No more was there—just that one brazen bowl

With traces of a curious oil within;

Fretted with some obscurely patterned scroll,

And symbols hinting vaguely of strange sin.

Little the fears of forty centuries meant

To us as we bore off our slender spoil,

And when we scanned it in our darkened tent

We struck a match to test the ancient oil.

It blazed—great God! . . . But the vast shapes we saw

In that mad flash have seared our lives with awe.