Before there was in Egypt any sound <br />Of those who reared a more prodigious means <br />For the self-heavy sleep of kings and queens <br />Than hitherto had mocked the most renowned,— <br />Unvisioned here and waiting to be found, <br />Alone, amid remote and older scenes, <br />You loomed above ancestral evergreens <br />Before there were the first of us around. <br /> <br />And when the last of us, if we know how, <br />See farther from ourselves than we do now, <br />Assured with other sight than heretofore <br />That we have done our mortal best and worst,— <br />Your calm will be the same as when the first <br />Assyrians went howling south to war.<br /><br />Edwin Arlington Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/monadnock-through-the-trees/
