midnight
Vain are all the triumphs of man . These temples and palaces , Reaching up to the brilliant stars In soaring grandeur , vast -- Shall pass away like morning mist , Leaving a wilderness of ruins . And , where now sits pride , wealth and fraud Pampered in purpled power -- The lizard , the bat and the wolf Shall hold their habitation ; And the vine and the rag-weed Swaying in the whistling winds Shall sing their mournful requiem . The silence of dark Babylon Shall brood where millions struggled , And naught shall be heard in cruel Rome , But the wail of the midnight storm , Echoing among the broken columns Of its lofty , vanished glory -- Where vain , presumptive , midget man Promised himself Immortality ! _ After five days of sightseeing we took the public stage for Milan , guarded by soldiers , and arrived safely on board the Albion , which sailed away , through the Strait of Messina , around classic Greece to Negropont and on to Alexandria , Egypt , where we anchored for a load of dates , figs and Persian spices . William and myself took a boat up the Nile to Cairo , and hired a guide to steer us over the desert to the far-famed Pyramids . There in the wild waste of desert sands these monuments to forgotten kings and queens lift their giant peaks , appealing to the centuries for recognition , but although the great granite stone memorials still remain as a wonder to mankind , the dark , silent mummies that sleep within and around these funereal emblems give back no sure voice as to when and where they lived , rose and fell in the long night of Egyptian darkness .