Cleopatra - H. Rider Haggard

For seven days the great festival had been celebrated, the suffering of the Lord Osiris had been commemorated, the grief of the Mother Isis had been sung and glory had been done to the memory of the coming of the Divine Child Horus, the Son, the Avenger, the God-begot. All these things had been carried out according to the ancient rites. The boats had floated on the sacred lake, the priests had scourged themselves before the sanctuaries, and the images had been borne through the streets at night.

And now, as the sun sank on the seventh day, once more the great procession gathered to chant the woes of Isis and tell how the evil was avenged. We went in silence from the temple, and passed through the city ways. First came those who clear the path, then my father Amenemhat in all his priestly robes, and the wand of cedar in his hand. Then, clad in pure linen, I, the neophyte, followed alone; and after me the white-robed priests, holding aloft banners and emblems of the Gods. Next came those who bear the sacred boat, and after them the singers and the mourners; while, stretching as far as the eye could reach, all the people marched, clad in melancholy black because Osiris was no more. We went in silence through the city streets till at length we came to the wall of the temple and passed in. And as my father, the High Priest, entered beneath the gateway of the outer pylon, a sweet-voiced woman singer began to sing the Holy Chant, and thus she sang:

“Sing we Osiris dead,
Lament the fallen head:
The light has left the world, the world is grey.
Athwart the starry skies
The web of Darkness flies,
And Isis weeps Osiris passed away.
Your tears, ye stars, ye fires, ye rivers, shed,
Weep, children of the Nile, weep for your Lord is dead!”

She paused in her most sweet song, and the whole multitude took up the melancholy dirge:

The chorus ceased, and once again she sang:

“Within the court divine
The Sevenfold sacred shrine
We pass, while echoes of the Temple walls
Repeat the long lament
The sound of sorrow sent
Far up within the imperishable halls,
Where, each in the other’s arms, the Sisters weep,
Isis and Nephthys, o’er His unawaking sleep.”

And then again rolled forth the solemn chorus of a thousand voices:

“Softly we tread, our measured footsteps falling
Within the Sanctuary Sevenfold;
Soft on the Dead that liveth are we calling:
‘Return, Osiris, from thy Kingdom cold!
Return to them that worship thee of old!’”
It ceased, and sweetly she took up the song:
“O dweller in the West,
Lover and Lordliest,
Thy love, thy Sister Isis, calls thee home!
Come from thy chamber dun
Thou Master of the Sun,
Thy shadowy chamber far below the foam!
With weary wings and spent
Through all the firmament,
Through all the horror-haunted ways of Hell,
I seek thee near and far,
From star to wandering star,
Free with the dead that in Amenti dwell.
I search the height, the deep, the lands, the skies,
Rise from the dead and live, our Lord Osiris, rise!”
“Softly we tread, our measured footsteps falling
Within the Sanctuary Sevenfold;
Soft on the Dead that liveth are we calling:
‘Return, Osiris, from thy Kingdom cold!
Return to them that worship thee of old!’”

Now in a strain more high and glad the singer sang: