Startled from my musing by these sounds, I at once recollected, that, on that very evening, the great festival of the Moon [pg 41]was to be celebrated. On a little island, half-way over between the gardens of Memphis and the eastern shore, stood the temple of that goddess,
Whose beams
Bring the sweet time of night-flowers and dreams.
Not the cold Dian of the North, who chains
In vestal ice the current of young veins;
But she, who haunts the gay, Bubastian grove,
And owns she sees, from her bright heav’n above,
Nothing on earth, to match that heav’n, but love!
Thus did I exclaim, in the words of one of their own Egyptian poets, as, anticipating the various delights of the festival, I cast away from my mind all gloomy thoughts, and, hastening to my little bark, in which I now lived, like a Nile-bird, on the waters, steered my course to the island-temple of the Moon.