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THE SPHINX'S CHILDREN,
THE SPHINX'S' CHILDREN.
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relentless, cruel as jealousy; an anomalous woman,
were she not a stone-born child of the Sphinx!
Or a great General, before whose iron will horse
and horseman quailed and fled, like dry stubble before
flame; who wielded the sword of Gideon. and cut off
the armies of his kindred people and his anointed
king as a mower fells the glittering grass on a summer
dawn, heedless that he, too, shall be cut down from
his flourishing. On his track fire and blood spread
their banners, and the raven scented his trophies afar
off; age and youth alike were crashed under the tread
of his war-horse; honor, and valor, and life's best prime,
opposed him as summer opposes the Arctic hail-fury,
and lay beaten into mire at his feet. Hated, feared,
followed to the death ; victorious or vanquished, the
same strong, imperturbable, sullen nature; persistent
rather than patient in effort, vigorously direct in action;
a minister of unconscious good, of half-conscious evil;
stern and gloomy to the sacrilegious climax of his well-
battled life, even in the regicidal act going as one
driven to his deeds by Fate that forgot God ; — was he
to be wondered at, whose life, in ages far gone, began
among the stony Sphinx children?
or alone in these great landmarks of their dwelling
have the Sphinx's children haunted Earth. Poets have
sung them under myriad names; History has chronicled
them in groups; Painting and Sculpture have
handed down their aspect to a gazing world, From
them sprung the Eumenides, pursuers and destroyers
of men. They wore the garb of Roman legionaries,
when Hannah wept for her children dashed against the
walls of the Holy City, and not one stone stood upon
another in Zion. They crowded the offices of the In-
quisition, and tested the endurance of its victims, with
steady finger on the flickering pulse, and calm eye on
the death-sweating brow and bitten lip. They put on
the Druid's robe and wreath, and held the human sacri-
fice closer to its altar. In the Asiatic jungle, lurking
behind the palm-trunk, they waited, lithe and swarthy
Thugs, treacherously to slay whatever victim passed
by alone; or in the fair Pacific Islands kept horrid
jubilee above their feasts of human flesh, and streaked
themselves with kindred blood in their carousals. Hol-
land tells its fearful story of their Spanish rule.
Russian serfs record their despotism, cowering at the
memory of the knout. France cringes yet at the names
of the black few who guided her roaring Revolution as
one might guide the ravages of a tiger with curb of
adamant and rein of linked steel.
Africa stretches out her hands to testify of their
presence. Too well those golden shores recall the
wail of women and the yelling curses of men, driven,
beast-fashion, to their pen, and floated from home to
hell, or-—happier fate'. —dragged up, in terror of
pursuit, and thrown overboard, a brief agony for a long
one. They know them, too, whose continual cry of
separation, starvation, insult, agony, and death rises
from the heart of freedom like the steam of a great
pestilence. Pity them, hearts of flesh! pity also the
captors, —the Sphinx children, the flint-hearts! pity
those who cannot feel, far beyond those who can, —
though it be but to suffer!
New England knew them, in band and steeple-hat,
hanging and pressing to death helpless women, be-
witched with witchcraft. Acadia knew them, when its
depopulated shores lay barren before the sun, and its
homes sent up no smoke to heaven.
Greece quivers at the phantasm of their Turkish
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