Hermes Trismegistus Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCD EFEFFGFG GGGGHGHG IGIGJFJF KEKEKFKF KLKLKGKG GMGMFNFN FGFGKOKO GPGPFFFF IGIGIQIQ| Still through Egypt's desert places | A |
| Flows the lordly Nile | B |
| From its banks the great stone faces | A |
| Gaze with patient smile | B |
| Still the pyramids imperious | C |
| Pierce the cloudless skies | D |
| And the Sphinx stares with mysterious | C |
| Solemn stony eyes | D |
| - | |
| But where are the old Egyptian | E |
| Demi gods and kings | F |
| Nothing left but an inscription | E |
| Graven on stones and rings | F |
| Where are Helios and Hephaestus | F |
| Gods of eldest eld | G |
| Where is Hermes Trismegistus | F |
| Who their secrets held | G |
| - | |
| Where are now the many hundred | G |
| Thousand books he wrote | G |
| By the Thaumaturgists plundered | G |
| Lost in lands remote | G |
| In oblivion sunk forever | H |
| As when o'er the land | G |
| Blows a storm wind in the river | H |
| Sinks the scattered sand | G |
| - | |
| Something unsubstantial ghostly | I |
| Seems this Theurgist | G |
| In deep meditation mostly | I |
| Wrapped as in a mist | G |
| Vague phantasmal and unreal | J |
| To our thought he seems | F |
| Walking in a world ideal | J |
| In a land of dreams | F |
| - | |
| Was he one or many merging | K |
| Name and fame in one | E |
| Like a stream to which converging | K |
| Many streamlets run | E |
| Till with gathered power proceeding | K |
| Ampler sweep it takes | F |
| Downward the sweet waters leading | K |
| From unnumbered lakes | F |
| - | |
| By the Nile I see him wandering | K |
| Pausing now and then | L |
| On the mystic union pondering | K |
| Between gods and men | L |
| Half believing wholly feeling | K |
| With supreme delight | G |
| How the gods themselves concealing | K |
| Lift men to their height | G |
| - | |
| Or in Thebes the hundred gated | G |
| In the thoroughfare | M |
| Breathing as if consecrated | G |
| A diviner air | M |
| And amid discordant noises | F |
| In the jostling throng | N |
| Hearing far celestial voices | F |
| Of Olympian song | N |
| - | |
| Who shall call his dreams fallacious | F |
| Who has searched or sought | G |
| All the unexplored and spacious | F |
| Universe of thought | G |
| Who in his own skill confiding | K |
| Shall with rule and line | O |
| Mark the border land dividing | K |
| Human and divine | O |
| - | |
| Trismegistus three times greatest | G |
| How thy name sublime | P |
| Has descended to this latest | G |
| Progeny of time | P |
| Happy they whose written pages | F |
| Perish with their lives | F |
| If amid the crumbling ages | F |
| Still their name survives | F |
| - | |
| Thine O priest of Egypt lately | I |
| Found I in the vast | G |
| Weed encumbered sombre stately | I |
| Grave yard of the Past | G |
| And a presence moved before me | I |
| On that gloomy shore | Q |
| As a waft of wind that o'er me | I |
| Breathed and was no more | Q |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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