me think of Philae as a lovely
temple of dreams, this silent, retired chamber, where some fabled
princess might well have been touched to a long, long sleep of
enchantment, and lain for years upon years among the magical
flowers--the lotus, and the palm, and the papyrus.

In my youth it made upon me an indelible impression. Through intervening
years, filled with many new impressions, many wanderings, many visions
of beauty in other lands, that retired, painted chamber had not faded
from my mind--or shall I say from my heart? There had seemed to me
within it something that was ineffable, as in a lyric of Shelley's there
is something that is ineffable, or in certain pictures of Boecklin,
such as "The Villa by the Sea." And when at last, almost afraid and
hesitating, I came into it once more, I found in it again the strange
spell of old enchantment.

It seems as if this chamber had been imagined by a poet, who had set
it in the centre of the temple of his dreams. It is such a spontaneous
chamber that one can scarcely imagine it more than a day and a night in
the building. Yet in detail it is lovely; it is finished and strangely
mighty; it is a lyric in stone, the most poetical chamber, perhaps, in
the whole of Egypt. For Philae I count in Egypt, though really it is in
Nubia.

One who has not seen Philae may perhaps wonder how a tall chamber of
solid stone, containing heavy and soaring columns, can be like a lyric
of Shelley's, can be exquisitely spontaneous, and yet hold a something
of mystery that makes one tread softly in it, and fear to disturb within
it some lovely sleeper of Nubia, some Princess of the Nile. He must
continue to wonder. To describe this chamber calmly, as I might, for
instance, describe the temple of Derr, would be simply to destroy it.
For things ineffable cannot be fully explained, or not be fully felt
by those the twilight of whose dreams is fitted to mingle with their
twilight. They who are meant to love with ardor _se passionnent pour
la passion_. And they who are meant to take and to keep the spirit of a
dream, whether it be hidden in a poem, or held in the cup of a flower,
or enfolded in arms of stone, will surely never miss it, even though
they can hear roaring loudly above its elfin voice the cry of directed
waters rushing down to Upper Egypt.

How can one disentangle from their tapestry web the different threads of
a spell? And even if one could, if one could hold them up, and explain,
"