"Beware!" 'Tis a voice from the shades,

from the dark of three thousand long years,

But it falls like the red blade of RA, and

should echo in Tyranny's ears

With the terror of overhead thunder; from

Nile to the Neva it thrills,

And it speaks of the judgment of wrong, of

the doom of imperious wills.

When PENTAOUR sang of the PHARAOH, alone

by Orontes, at bay,

By the chariots compassed about of the foe

who were fierce for the fray,

He sang of the dauntless oppressor, of RAMESES,

conquering king;

But were there such voice by the Neva to-day,

of what now should he sing?

Of tyranny born out of time, of oppression

belated and vain?

Put up the old weapon, O despot, slack hand

from the scourge and the chain;

For the days of the PHARAOHS are done, and

the laureates of tyranny mute,

And the whistle of falchion and flail are not

set to the chords of the lute.

True, the Hebrew, who bowed to the lash of

the Pyramid-builders, bows still,

For a time, to the knout of the TSAR, to the

Muscovite's merciless will;

But four millions of Israel's children are not

to be crushed in the path

Of a TSAR, like the Hittites of old, when great

RAMESES flamed in his wrath

Alone through their numberless hosts. No,

the days of the Titans of Wrong

Are past, for the Truth is a torch, and the

voice of the peoples is strong.

Even PENTAOUR, the poet of Might, spake in

pity that rings down the years

Of the life of "the peasant that tills" of his

terrible toil and his tears;

Of the rats and the locusts that ravaged, and,

worse, the tax-gathering horde

Who tithed all his pitiful tilth with the aid

of the stick and the cord;

And the splendour of RAMESES pales in the

text of the old Coptic Muse,

And—one hears the mad rush of the wheels

that the fierce Red Sea billow pursues!

O Muscovite, blind in your wrath, with

your heel on the Israelite's neck,

And your hand on that baleful old blade,

Persecution, 'twere wisdom to reck

The PHARAOH'S calm warning. Beware!

Lo, the Pyramids pierce the grey gloom

Of a desert that is but a waste, by a river

that is but a tomb,

Yet the Hebrew abides and is strong.

AMENEMAN is gone to the ghosts,

He the prince of the Coptic police who so

harried the Israelite hosts

When their lives with hard-bondage were

bitter. And now bitter bondage you'd try.

Proscription, and exile, and stern deprivation.

Beware, Sire! Put by

That blade in its blood-rusted scabbard. The

PHARAOHS, the CAESARS have found

That it wounds him who wields it; and you,

though your victim there, prone on the ground,

Look helpless and hopeless, you also shall find

Persecution a bane

Which shall lead to a Red Sea of blood to

o'erwhelm selfish Tyranny's train.

"Beware!" Tis the shade of MENEPTHA

that whispers the warning from far.

Concerning that sword there's a lesson the

PHARAOH may teach to the TSAR!