Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Oblivion

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

NEAR the great pyramid, unshadowed, white,

With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze,

Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays,

Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light.

About them, searing to the tingling sight,

Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways,

Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze,

In a white void with neither depth nor height.

Within the black core of the pyramid,

Beneath the weight of sunless centuries,

Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep:

Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid

He knows no black oblivion more deep

Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies.