All luxuriance of life had vanished. Even as time seemed to have stood still, and the people learnt their arts and crafts from those who died six thousand years ago, so growth seemed to have vanished from the visible world. Now and then as you wandered up a valley a single blade of barley shone like a gem half hidden by a stone; or some plant, desert-coloured, spread, dry greyish tufts, where the ground retained invisible moisture. But life hung suspended, and the longer you dwelt in the country the more you perceived that you were living in the City of the Dead. Sometimes one forgot how days and weeks were passing, and again a thousand years were but as yesterday, a watch in the night. The noises of the outside world came but faintly: once, we heard the sound of a nation weeping and the nations of the earth sorrowing with it, and again the sober welcome to one who came to take upon him the burden of the State.
So they sorrowed four thousand years ago—not without hope. “A hawk has soared—the follower of the god met his maker.” So the officers of State welcomed the son who should take its cares upon him. And on that very night when with grief and praise the nation laid to rest a Queen and mother in the fullness of her age, our eyes looked on, resting untouched, deep in the recesses of the rock, among the mystic symbols of his faith, the body of a king swathed still and garlanded who died three thousand years before that Queen was born.
The sounds of war came dimly, for the pictures of far earlier wars might meet the eyes day by day; and when we came on the bodies of those men who warred and taught and lived and enjoyed, alert in the chase, quiescent in the cool breath of their gardens, they lay quiet with their ornaments perhaps upon them, a garland round their neck, a book between their feet.
But when at last returning we came down to the fields, we saw that time indeed had passed. The corn which was but sprouting when we came, was full in the ear, and the barley was yellowing to harvest; the bean-flower had opened, spread its fragrance and passed; the purple vetch still lingered; the poppy raised an imperial head. Clouds of gay, thieving sparrows rose as we passed; the crested lark ran before us, sprang and hovered with a few notes of liquid song; tiny birds hung on the barley blades; the whistle of the quail came from the deep green where it hid. The river spread before us like a highway paved with sapphire; so we passed along it to the north and the voices of the world we belonged to rung out clearer as we moved; and behind us there faded like a dream that world whose present is four thousand years of time with the insistence of its silent voices, the permanence of the dead, the fleeting brightness of the living.
THE SILENT ROMANCE
V
THE SILENT ROMANCE
The cock has been defying Achmet Bukdadi again to-day.