XX A QUEEN'S GAZELLE
(IN THE GÎZEH MUSEUM)
Mighty mother of Priest-kings, say
How fares it now in the ‘Fields of the Sun,’
Does the little gazelle of your earthly play
To the voice of your calling run?
You are sleeping still in your painted chest,
The funeral meats at your side are laid,
Three thousand years you have taken your rest,
And still your soul is a shade!
But the hearts of us mortals are yet the same,
Still, still we can honour the gentle Queen,
She whose voice by its charm could tame
The timidest thing that had been.
She who could call her gazelle so fond
Back from its haunts in the Theban hill,
She who believed in a life beyond
For creatures we care but to kill.
She who dying could think of the dead
—Her playmate wrapped in its linen rolls,
And pray it might lie at her feet, or her head,
For joy in the land of souls.
Uast-Em-Khebit, the broiderers bent,
Not without tears, o'er their task that morn;
They stitched at the glorious funeral tent
Whereunder your body was borne.
When the patch-work squares into beauty grew,
And the hawk of the sun shone out like fire,
They thought of your soul as a hawk that flew,
They remembered your soul's desire.
And there on the curtain, your sleep above,
They wrought, 'mid the clusters of palm, the gazelle,
And about its neck, for a garland, wove
The lilies you loved so well.