But whoever, in those mystic ages that have ceased to be historic and have
become mythic, whoever made the Sphinx,--whether it were some Titaness
sequestered from all her kind by genie-spells, forced to live amid these
desert solitudes, fed from the abundant hands of Nature, and taught by
dreams inspired and twilight visions,--
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair";
her only image of human beauty the reflex of her white, symmetric limbs,
her wide, dark eyes, her full lips and soft Egyptian features, wherewith
the river greeted her from its blue placidity; her only sense of love the
unspoken yearning within, when the soft, tumultuous stress of the west-wind
kissed her, who should have been clasped in tender arms and caressed by
loving lips; whose dumb, creative instincts, becoming genius instead of
maternity, struggled outward from their home in heart and brain to
culminate in this world's-wonder, and so build a monument namelessly
splendid to the grand nature that found its bread of life was a stone and
perished: or whether this creature were the fashioning of some
demigod,--"for there were giants in those days,"--who, in the fulness of
his strength, despairing of a mortal mate, wandered away from men and
wrought his patience and his longing into the rock,--as lesser men have
carved their memorials on hard Fate,--and then died between its paws, sated
with labor and glad to sleep: or whether, indeed, the captive spirits,
sealed in Caucasus with the seal of Solomon, did penance for their
rebellion in mortal work on mere dull matter, and with anguished essence
toiled for ages to mimic in her own clay the dumb pathos of waiting
Earth:--whichever of these dreams be nearest truth, one thing is
true,--that the maker of the Sphinx infused into his work, in as much
greater measure as his nature was greater than that of other men, that
yearning of pathetic solitude that most wrings a woman's heart; and the
outward semblance, working in, wrought upon the heavy stone with incessant
and accumulative power, till through that sluggish sandstone crept a
confused thrill of consciousness, and the great creature felt the
loneliness that she looked.
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