The dayabeyah sails mingle with the taut pride of the palm trees,

The echoes of the voices of men and the bleating of the flocks come from far off to our ears.

All things are shadows cast across the horizon of our dream

Day after day, we follow our course between two heavens. ELIZABETH COATSWORTH

AT KARNAC

STONE lily cool
And beautiful,

Calm lintel cut of old,
Sunset and gold;

Silent around thee lies
Ruin of God and man,

Under deep skies
Burning, blue, African.
How long ago was it

Since thou wert door or gate,

Stone lily desolate?

O and where went they then,

All those forgotten men

Into what infinite

Temple aloof?

Where now through the broken roof
Only bats flit.

Stone lily cool,

Grown in no lotus-pool,

Chiselled by love of old,

Lonely and beautiful

Sunset and gold.

Door of what shrine

Never trod foot of mine
Thy threshold of sands;
But, like some stiff
Impersonal hieroglyph,
I lift up my hands;
Lift them saluting thy
Beauty and mystery,
Stone lily cool.

I am but man and come
Hushed to adore thee;
I am to-day that casts
His shadow before thee;
I am to-day that stands
Wondering, dumb,

Humble beside the Past's
Beautiful

Gate-way and tomb.

J. REDWOOD ANDERSON

SUNSET ON THE DESERT

As some priest turns, his ritual all done,

And stretching hands above the kneeling crowd, Who rapt and silent, wait with heads all bowed For the last holy words of benison

"Now God be with thee, ever Three in One”
So turns the sun, though all reluctantly.
One thrilling moment comes to shrub and tree;
Expectant stillness falls; then dark and dun

The silhouettes of sphinx and pyramid

Gaze at the last deep amber after-glow;

The little stars peep down between the palms;
And all the ghosts that garish daylight hid
Are quickened Isis with the breasts of snow
And Antony with Egypt in his arms.

THEODORE MAYNARD

CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY

"Is there no drinking of pearls save they be dissolved in biting tears?”

LOVE-TORCH of all the East, the lifted brand
Whose flame lit Egypt and the world beside,
Lies languorous now, sleep-quenched upon his heart.
Warm, throbbing breath like incense in the dark
Rises from those pomegranate lips of hers
Love-bruised, and curled with her last whisper still.
One tropic arm is bare. Flung round his neck
It lies, a gleaming link of Antony's chain. . . .
The night is quiet. Tented silks hang still
As blossoms after storm. The gold, the red,
The purple like her Orient soul, deep-dyed,
Spread the rich petals of a garden dreamed.
And Antony is dreaming. His deep eyes

Turned from the world, from her upon his breast,
Gaze through the shimmering splendour overhead,
Piercing the vaulted crimson, while the gold,
The molten roof, fades slowly into night,
Deep night, austere with darkness, folds him in.

His body moves not, yet his spirit glides
Forth into loneliness. The faithful stars
Above him stand like sentries of the night,
Majestic, changing guards, where hour by hour
They watch the shadowed passes of the sky.

And now he leans where cold, unsheathed, the Nile Divides with glittering blade the fevered sands. GRETCHEN O. WARREN

BEDOUIN LOVE SONG

FROM the Desert I come to thee

On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee,

With a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment Book
unfold!

Look from thy window and see

My passion and my pain;

I lie on the sands below,

And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow

Of a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment Book

unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,

By the fever in my breast,

To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,

And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment Book
unfold!

BAYARD TAYLOR

старей

THE WHISPER OF THE SANDS

NIGHT, and the golden glory of the moon

Above the undulant sweep of desert lands, And borne o'er dusky dale and shimmering dune The whisper of the sands!

am м

Faint as the faintest ripple on the shore

Of Nile that holds its enigmatic spell;

Faint as the dawn-winds where tall palm-trees soar,
Or murmur in a shell!

Faint and inscrutable, freighted with the breath
Of ages that have long, long ceased to be;
Weighted with mysteries of birth and death,
Time and eternity!

And so I linger till the night grows old

And the rose-blossom of the morn expands, And hear these ceaseless marvels manifold, The whisper of the sands!