THE EGYPTIAN WAKES
I woke at night in my eternal tomb
The desert sands had hid a thousand years,
And heard the Nile-crier across the gloom
Calling, "The flood has come! beseech the gods!"
I rose in haste, as one who blindly hears,
And sought the barterers of grain and wine
Culled for the praise and service of divine
Great Isis, by the slave who for her plods.
But as I passed along, woe! what was this,
Strange faces and strange fashions and strange fanes
Standing upon the midnight; Oh, the pains
That swept across my startled thought's abyss!
I moaned. My body crumbled into dust.
And then my soul fled Here—where all souls must.
THE IMAM'S PARABLE
Behold, the wind of the Desert rose,
Khamsin, in a shroud of sand,
And swept the Libyan waste, across
To far Somali-land.
His voice was thick with the drouth of death
And smote the earth as a burning breath,
Or as a curse which Allah saith
Unto a demon-band.
The caravan from the oasis
Of palm-engirt Kûrkûr
Shuddered and couched in shaken heaps,
The horror to endure.
Its mighty Sheik, like a soul in Hell
Who longs for the lute of Israfel,
Longed for the trickle of Keneh's well,
Imperishably pure!
Three days he longed, and the wind three days
About him whirled the shroud.
Then did a shrill dawn bring the sun—
And a gaunt vulture-crowd.
A few bleak bones on the Desert still
Lie for the Judgment Day to thrill
Again into life—if Allah will:
Let not your heart be proud.