“Help! Help! Allah give us help!
Help! Help! Allah give us help!”
The dust flies up about their naked feet. Triumph and work; work succeeded by the triumph all can see. I like to hear the workmen’s voices within the hall of Seti. I like to see the dust stirred by their tramping feet.
And then I like to go once more to the little temple, to enter through its defaced gateway, to stand alone in its silence between the rows of statues with their arms folded upon their quiet breasts, to gaze into the tender darkness beyond,—the darkness that looks consecrated,—to feel that peace is more wonderful than triumph, that the end of things is peace.
Triumph and deathless peace, the bugle-call and silence—these are the notes of Karnak.
VIII
LUXOR
UPON the wall of the great court of Amenhotep III in the temple of Luxor there is a delicious dancing procession in honor of Rameses II. It is very funny and very happy; full of the joy of life—a sort of radiant cake-walk of old Egyptian days. How supple are these dancers! They seem to have no bones. One after another they come in line upon the mighty wall, and each one bends backward to the knees of the one who follows. As I stood and looked at them for the first time, almost I heard the twitter of flutes, the rustic wail of the African hautboy, the monotonous boom of the derabukkeh, cries of a far-off gaiety such as one often hears from the Nile by night. But these cries came down the long avenues of the centuries; this gaiety was distant in the vasty halls of the long-dead years. Never can I think of Luxor without thinking of those happy dancers, without thinking of the life that goes in the sun on dancing feet.
There are a few places in the world that one associates with happiness, that one remembers always with a smile, a little thrill at the heart that whispers, “There