AMESSID

Upon an image of immortal stone,
Seated and vast, the moon of Luxor falls,
Lending to it a stillness that appals,
A mystery Osirian and strange.
The hands outplaced upon the knees in lone
And placid majesty reveal the power
Of Egypt in her most triumphal hour,
The calm of tyranny that cannot change.
It is of that Great king, who heard the cries
Of millions toil to lift him to the skies,
Who saw them perish at their task like flies,
Yet let no eye of pity o'er them range.
What rue, then, if his desecrated face
Rots now at Cairo in a mummy case?

IMMORTAL FOES

At Bedrashein between the pyramids
I saw the winged sun fold up his pinions
And sink into the nether world's dominions
Where Set sent ill on the Egyptian dead.
I saw the ancient Desert, that outbids
The Nile for the date-lands between them spread,
Fling over Memphis that is vanished,
Another shroud of sand, then bid his minions,
The winds, lie down upon their boundless bed.

I saw where temples vowed to Serapis
And granite splendours men name Pharaonic
Are kept by Time in silence and sardonic
Concealment--mummied in deep mystic tombs.
And when the stars came out in quiet bliss,
I heard Eternity with all its dooms,
Past and to come, sound softly the mnemonic
Of Death who waits all worlds that Life enwombs.

THE CONSCRIPT

The camel at the old sakiyeh
Toils around and round.
Aweary is he of the Nile
And of the wailing sound
Of the slow wheel he turns all day
To lift the water on its way
Over the fields of Ahmed Bey,
That with green grain abound.

Aweary is he, too, of fellaheen
Who compel him on,
With thick-voiced chanting till the day
Over the West has gone.
For the bold Desert was he made,
The Bedouin, his lord, to aid,
Not for this peasant wheel of trade
That ever must be drawn.

But on he toils while dahabiyeh
And dark felucca glide
Below him on the glassy flow
Of the gray river's tide.
Then when the night has come lies down,
In sleep the servile day to drown--
Like all whom Life turns with a frown
From their true fate aside.

NAVIS IGNOTA

Lord, what ship goes forth to-day?
I see her setting West.
Shall she have thy winds aright,
Stars to guide her with their light,
Shall she sweep the seas to sight
Of land and harbour-rest?

Awful is thy ocean-wrath,
And none can chart thy shoals
When storm unassuaging hath
Blotted sun and planet-path.
Shall she, Lord, escape t