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(From The Burden of Egypt)
O THOU beneficent and bounteous stream! | |
| Thou patriarch river! on whose ample breast | |
| We dwelt the time that full at once could seem | |
| Of busiest travel and of softest rest: | |
| No wonder that thy being was so blest | 5 |
| That gratitude of old to worship grew, | |
| That as a living god thou wert addrest, | |
| And to itself the immediate agent drew | |
| To one creative power the feelings only due. | |
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| For in thy title and in Nature’s truth | 10 |
| Thou art and makest Egypt: were thy source | |
| But once arrested in its bubbling youth, | |
| Or turned extravagant to some new course, | |
| By a fierce crisis of convulsive force, | |
| Egypt would cease to be,—the intrusive sand | 15 |
| Would smother its rich fields without remorse, | |
| And scarce a solitary palm could stand | |
| To tell, that barren vale was once the wealthiest land. | |
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| Scarce with more certain order waves the Sun | |
| His matin banners in the eastern sky, | 20 |
| Than at the reckoned period are begun | |
| Thy operations of fertility: | |
| Through the long sweep thy bosom swelling high | |
| Expands between the sandy mountain chains, | |
| The walls of Libya and of Araby, | 25 |
| Till in the active virtue it contains | |
| The desert bases sink and rise prolific plains. | |
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| See through the naked length no blade of grass, | |
| No animate sign, relieves the dismal strand, | |
| Such it might seem our orb’s first substance was, | 30 |
| Ere touched by God with generative hand; | |
| Yet at one step we reach the teeming land, | |
| Lying fresh-green beneath the scorching sun, | |
| As succulent as if at its command | |
| It held all rains that fall, all brooks that run, | 35 |
| And this, O generous Nile! is thy vast benison. | |
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| Whence comest thou, so marvellously dowered | |
| As never other stream on earth beside? | |
| Where are thy founts of being, thus empowered | |
| To form a nation by thy annual tide? | 40 |
| The charts are silent; history guesses wide; | |
| Adventure from thy quest returns ashamed; | |
| And each new age, in its especial pride, | |
| Believes that it shall be as that one named, | |
| In which to all mankind thy birthplace was proclaimed. | 45 |
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| Though priests upon thy banks, mysterious water! | |
| Races of men in lofty knowledge schooled, | |
| Though warriors, winning fame through shock and slaughter, | |
| Sesostris to Napoleon, here have ruled: | |
| Yet has the secret of thy sources fooled | 50 |
| The monarch’s strength, the labors of the wise, | |
| And, though the world’s desire has never cooled, | |
| Our practised vision little more descries | |
| Than old Herodotus beheld with simple eyes. | |
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| And now in Egypt’s late degraded day, | 55 |
| A venerating love attends thee still, | |
| And the poor fellah, from thee torn away, | |
| Feels a strange yearning his rude bosom fill; | |
| Like the remembered show of lake and hill, | |
| That wrings the Switzer’s soul, though fortune smile, | 60 |
| Thy mirage haunts him, uncontrolled by will, | |
| And wealth or war in vain the heart beguile | |
| That clings to its mud-hut and palms beside the Nile. | |
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