in prayer. And the rich man spreads his
carpet, and prays. And the half-naked nomad spreads nothing; but he
prays, too. The East is full of lust and full of money-getting, and
full of bartering, and full of violence; but it is full of worship--of
worship that disdains concealment, that recks not of ridicule or
comment, that believes too utterly to care if others disbelieve. There
are in the East many men who do not pray. They do not laugh at the man
who does, like the unpraying Christian. There is nothing ludicrous to
them in prayer. In Egypt your Nubian sailor prays in the stern of your
dahabiyeh; and your Egyptian boatman prays by the rudder of your boat;
and your black donkey-boy prays behind a red rock in the sand; and
your camel-man prays when you are resting in the noontide, watching the
far-off quivering mirage, lost in some wayward dream.

And must you not pray, too, when you enter certain temples where once
strange gods were worshipped in whom no man now believes?

There is one temple on the Nile which seems to embrace in its arms all
the worship of the past; to be full of prayers and solemn praises; to be
the holder, the noble keeper, of the sacred longings, of the unearthly
desires and aspirations, of the dead. It is the temple of Edfu. From all
the other temples it stands apart. It is the temple of inward flame, of
the secret soul of man; of that mystery within us that is exquisitely
sensitive, and exquisitely alive; that has longings it cannot tell, and
sorrows it dare not whisper, and loves it can only love.

To Horus it was dedicated--hawk-headed Horus--the son of Isis and
Osiris, who was crowned with many crowns, who was the young Apollo
of the old Egyptian world. But though I know this, I am never able to
associate Edfu with Horus, that child wearing the side-lock--when he
is not hawk-headed in his solar aspect--that boy with his finger in his
mouth, that youth who fought against Set, murderer of his father.

Edfu, in its solemn beauty, in its perfection of form, seems to me to
pass into a region altogether beyond identification with the worship of
any special deity, with particular attributes, perhaps with particular
limitations; one who can be graven upon walls, and upon architraves and
pillars painted in brilliant colors; one who can personally pursue a
criminal, like some policeman in the street; even one who can rise
upon the world in the visible glory of the sun. To me, Edfu must always
repres