Ancient Egyptian New Year + Back-to-School Poems!

Hello everyone –

Since the ancient Egyptian New Year took place yesterday (Thursday, August 29), what better time could there be to reflect on the rich legacy of science, history, and culture that Egypt has bequeathed to us?  Gerald Massey (1828-1907), a Victorian Egyptologist, penned this tribute to the ancient Egyptians and their colossal achievements.

“Egypt” by Gerald Massey (1882)

Egypt!  How I have dwelt with you in dreams,

So long, so intimately, that it seems

As if you had borne me; though I could not know

It was so many thousand years ago!

And in my gropings darkly underground

The long-lost memory at last is found

Of motherhood – you mother of us all!

And to my fellowmen I must recall

The memory too; that common motherhood

May help to make the common brotherhood.

Egypt!  It lies there in the far-off past,

Opening with depths profound and growths as vast

As the great valley of Yosemite;

The birthplace out of darkness into day;

The shaping matrix of the human mind;

The cradle and the nursery of our kind.

This was the land created from the flood,

The land of Atum, made of the red mud,

Where Num sat in his Teba throned on high,

And saw the deluge once a year go by,

Each brimming with the blessing that it brought,

And by that waterway, in Egypt’s thought,

The gods descended; but they never hurled

The deluge that should desolate the world.

There the vast hewers of the early time

Built, as if that way they would surely climb

The heavens, and left their labors without name –

Colossal as their carelessness of fame –

Sole likeness of themselves – that heavenward

Forever look with statuesque regard,

As if some vision of the eternal grown

Petrific, was forever fixed in stone!

They watched the moon re-orb, the stars go round,

And drew the circle; thought’s primordial bound.

The heavens looked into them with living eyes

To kindle starry thoughts in other skies,

For us reflected in the image-scroll,

That night by night the stars for aye unroll.

The royal heads of language bow them down

To lay in Egypt’s lap each borrowed crown.

The glory of Greece was but the afterglow

Of her forgotten greatness lying low;

Her hieroglyphics buried dark as night,

Or coal deposits filled with future light,

Are mines of meaning; by their light we see

Through many an overshadowing mystery.

The nursing Nile is living Egypt still,

And as her lowlands with its freshness fill,

And heave with double-breasted bounteousness,

So doth the old hidden source of mind yet bless

The nations; secretly she brought to birth,

And Egypt still enriches all the earth.

And here are some back-to-school poems that I recall from my own elementary school days in the 1970s! J

“Back to School” by Helen H. Moore

Summer's almost gone now,

And on the streets we see

School buses filled with children

Where ice cream trucks should be.

“Fall Is Here” by Helen H. Moore

Fall is here. Another year is coming to an end.

Summer’s finished, summer’s gone, winter’s round the bend.

Fall is piles of crunchy leaves, orange, gold, and red.

Fall is sweaters with long sleeves and blankets on the bed.

Fall is football, fall is pumpkins, fall’s where summer ends;

And fall is coming back to school, and seeing all my friends.

Happy Labor Day Weekend! J

Rob