An Anthology of Australian Verse/Ishmonie
ISHMONIE
The traveller tells how, in that ancient clime
Whose mystic monuments and ruins hoar
Still struggle with the antiquary’s lore,
To guard the secrets of a by-gone time,
He saw, uprising from the desert bare,
Like a while ghost, a city of the dead,
With palaces and temples wondrous fair,
Where moon-horn’d Isis once was worshipped.
But silence, like a pall, did all enfold,
And the inhabitants were turn’d to stone—
Yea, stone the very heart of every one!
Once to a rich man I this tale re-told.
“Stone hearts! A traveller’s myth!”—he turn’d aside,
As Hunger begg’d, pale-featured and wild-eyed.
Whose mystic monuments and ruins hoar
Still struggle with the antiquary’s lore,
To guard the secrets of a by-gone time,
He saw, uprising from the desert bare,
Like a while ghost, a city of the dead,
With palaces and temples wondrous fair,
Where moon-horn’d Isis once was worshipped.
But silence, like a pall, did all enfold,
And the inhabitants were turn’d to stone—
Yea, stone the very heart of every one!
Once to a rich man I this tale re-told.
“Stone hearts! A traveller’s myth!”—he turn’d aside,
As Hunger begg’d, pale-featured and wild-eyed.