long the staired streets: _Naharkum Sayeed!_--May your day be blessed.
_Naharaka abyad!_--May your day be white. _Allah yahtikum el
afiyeh!_--God give health to you. They were chanted like a refrain of a
song.

Beauty! Riot and slashing of color. Yet there was line here and massive
proportion. The sparkling, magenta city had been the theater of great
marching hosts. The Phenicians had built it: "the root of life, the
nurse of cities, the primitive queen of the world," they had named her.
And gone the Phenicians, and came the slim subtle Egyptians. And the
massive burly Assyrians came next: and now the memory of them was
forgotten, also their love and their hatred and their envy was now
perished. And then came the tramp of the Roman legions, Agrippa's men,
and held the city for centuries. Justinian had one of his law schools
there, until the earth quaked and the scholars dispersed. And then the
Saracens held it until Baldwin, brother of Godfrey de Bouillon, clashed
into it with mailed crusaders; and Baldwin, overcome with the beauty of
the land, took him a paynim queen. And then came the occult reign of the
Druse. And then the Turk.

And St. George had killed the Dragon there, after the old monk's tale.

Shane Campbell was never weary of looking at the inscriptions on the
great cliffs at the River of the Dog--the strange beauty of that name!
It was like the place-names of native Ulster--_Athbo_, the Ford of Cows,
_Sraidcuacha_, the Cuckoo's Lane--one name sounded to the other like
tuning-forks. And the sweet strange harmony of it filled his heart, so
that he could understand the irresistible charm of Lebanon--the high
clear note like a bird's song. Here was the sun and the dreams of mighty
things, and the palpable proximity of God. Here was beauty native, to be
picked like a nugget, not to be mined for in bitter hours of torment and
distress.

High, clear, sustained, the note held. Arose the moon and the great
stars like spangles. The slender acacias murmured. The pines
_hush-hushed_. The _bronhaha_ of the cafes was like a considered
counterpoint. Everywhere was harmony; beauty. And there would be no
depression. It would last. There would be no ghosts. They were
exorcised. For now there was Fenzile. How understandable everything was!
It must have been under a moon like this, under these Syrian stars, to
the _hush-hush-hush_ of the pine and the rustle of willow branches, that
Solomon the king sang his love-song. And i