(Inscription on Haskal hall, University of Chicago)
A feeble light of mummy-cloth and bones,
From crumbling coffins and the broken tombs,
From hieroglyphic mysteries on stones,
Removed from pyramidal catacombs,
Or sacred rock-hewn shrines where silence, and
Dark night have reigned five thousand years,--
A flick’ring flame, hid ’neath the desert sand,
And now revived, until its brightness clears
The gloom of history, thanks to the toil
Of sages who are following its gleam
Into the hoary past, and there the oil
Of wisdom find which turns the agelong dream
Of resurrection to reality,
And Egypt from Oblivion sets free.