Think Of The Color Of Young Clover, Of Young
Barley, Of Young Wheat; Think Of The Timbre Of The Reed
Flute's voice,
thin, clear, and frail with the frailty of dewdrops; think of the
torrents of spring rushing through the
Veins of a great, wide land,
and growing almost still at last on their journey. Spring, you will
say, perhaps, and high Nile not yet subsided! But Egypt is the favored
land of a spring that is already alert at the end of November, and in
December is pushing forth its green. The Nile has sunk away from the
feet of the Colossi that it has bathed through many days. It has freed
the plain to the fellaheen, though still it keeps my island in its
clasp. And Hapi, or Kam-wra, the "Great Extender," and Ra, have made
this wonderful spring to bloom on the dark earth before the
Christian's Christmas.
What a pastoral it is, this plain of Thebes, in the dawn of day! Think
of the reed flute, I have said, not because you will hear it, as you
ride toward the mountains, but because its voice would be utterly in
place here, in this arcady of Egypt, playing no tarantella, but one of
those songs, half bird-like, and half sadly, mysteriously human, which
come from the soul of the East. Instead of it, you may catch distant
cries from the bank of the river, where the shadoof-man toils, lifting
ever the water and his voice, the one to earth, the other, it seems,
to sky; and the creaking lay of the water-wheel, which pervades Upper
Egypt like an atmosphere, and which, though perhaps at first it
irritates, at last seems to you the sound of the soul of the river, of
the sunshine, and the soil.
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