Chrysalides Poem by Annie Adams Fields

NIGHT-BLUE skies of thine,
Egypt, and thy dead who may not rest,
Who with wide eyes
Stand staring in the darkness of the mine!
Thy woman, Egypt, with her breast
Two cups of carven gold,
And hands that no more rise
In praise or supplication, or to sound
The timbrel in the dance!
White is thy noontide glare,
But no keen glance
Of yet created sun
Can pierce the deeps and caverns of thy dead.
They are overspread
With a new earth, where new men come and go,
And sleep when all is done;
While far below,
Shut from the upper air,
These stirless figures, bound
In awful cerements, must forever wait.

There is another land
Where in a valley once the god Pan slept,
Under the young blue sky, between two peaks;
And here a hero, running, as one seeks
For fame, with ardor which his strength outstepped,
Fell dying in the stillness; quiet lay
The rounded marble limbs in the green grass.
An eagle, pausing on his fiery way,
Down swooped. Lo! as he soared, alas!
Nearing his awful steep,
Where only the dews weep,
And bearing in his clutches that bright form,
He heard the hero's voice:
'Eat, bird, and feed thyself! This morsel choice
Shall give thy claws a span;
This courage of a man
Shall bid thy pinion swell,
And by my strength thy wings shall grow an well.'