Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DUST-LAYERS by HERMAN MELVILLE

Poet Analysis

First Line: ABREAST THROUGH TOWN BY NILE THEY GO
Last Line: OR MADE A MUDDY CLAY!
Abreast through town by Nile they go
With water-skins the dust to lay,
A soggy set in sorry row
Squeezing their skins in bag-pipe way.
With droning rhyme that times the twitch
They squirt the water, squirt and switch
In execrable play!

Osiris! what indignity,
In open eye of day,
Offered the arch majesty
Of Thotmes passed away;
The atoms of his pomp no prouder
Than to be blown about in powder,
Or made a muddy clay!



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