subsided there
would be fields to be planted with dourha and onions and sugar-cane; but
they whose strong arms should plough and sow and wield the sickle, the
youth, the upstanding ones, had been carried off in chains to serve in
the army of Egypt, destined for the far Soudan, for hardship, misery,
and death, never to see their kindred any more. Twice during three
months had the dread servant of the Palace come and driven off
their best like sheep to the slaughter. The brave, the stalwart, the
bread-winners, were gone; and yet the tax-gatherer would come and press
for every impost--on the onion-field, the date-palm, the dourha-field,
and the clump of sugar-cane, as though the young men, the toilers,
were still there. The old and infirm, the children, the women, must now
double and treble their labour. The old men must go to the corvee, and
mend the banks of the Nile for the Prince and his pashas, providing
their own food, their own tools, their own housing, if housing there
would be--if it was more than sleeping under a bush by the riverside, or
crawling into a hole in the ground, their yeleks their clothes by day,
their only covering at night.

They sat like men without hope, yet with the proud, bitter mien of
those who had known good and had lost it, had seen content and now were
desolate.

Presently one--a lad--the youngest of them, lifted up his voice and
began to chant a recitative, while another took a small drum and beat
it in unison. He was but just recovered from an illness, or he had gone
also in chains to die for he knew not what, leaving behind without hope
all that he loved:

"How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree,
The lemon-tree, that standeth by the door.
The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste,
The weevil, it has eaten at the core
The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it.
My music, it is but the drip of tears,
The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire,
Night filleth me with fears.
O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood?
He was as one who lifteth up the yoke,
He was as one who taketh off the chain,
As one who sheltereth from the rain,
As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying.
His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me,
For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse,
And now like a gourd