| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| VIII. Avon’s Harvest, Etc. |
| 12. Monadnock Through the Trees |
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| BEFORE there was in Egypt any sound | |
| Of those who reared a more prodigious means | |
| For the self-heavy sleep of kings and queens | |
| Than hitherto had mocked the most renowned,— | |
| Unvisioned here and waiting to be found, | 5 |
| Alone, amid remote and older scenes, | |
| You loomed above ancestral evergreens | |
| Before there were the first of us around. | |
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| And when the last of us, if we know how, | |
| See farther from ourselves than we do now, | 10 |
| Assured with other sight than heretofore | |
| That we have done our mortal best and worst,— | |
| Your calm will be the same as when the first | |
| Assyrians went howling south to war. | |
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