LUX EX ORIENTE (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.