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(November 14, 1770)
IN sunset’s light o’er Afric thrown, | |
| A wanderer proudly stood | |
| Beside the well-spring, deep and lone, | |
| Of Egypt’s awful flood; | |
| The cradle of that mighty birth, | 5 |
| So long a hidden thing to earth. | |
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| He heard its life’s first murmuring sound, | |
| A low mysterious tone; | |
| A music sought, but never found | |
| By kings and warriors gone; | 10 |
| He listen’d—and his heart beat high— | |
| That was the song of victory! | |
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| The rapture of a conqueror’s mood | |
| Rush’d burning through his frame, | |
| The depths of that green solitude | 15 |
| Its torrents could not tame, | |
| Though stillness lay with eve’s last smile, | |
| Round those calm fountains of the Nile, | |
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| Night came with stars;—across his soul, | |
| There swept a sudden change, | 20 |
| E’en at the pilgrim’s glorious goal, | |
| A shadow dark and strange, | |
| Breathed forth the thought, so swift to fall | |
| O’er triumph’s hour—And is this all? | |
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| No more than this!—what seem’d it now | 25 |
| First by that spring to stand? | |
| A thousand streams of lovelier flow | |
| Bathed his own mountain land! | |
| Whence, far o’er waste and ocean track, | |
| Their wild sweet voices call’d him back. | 30 |
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| They call’d him back to many a glade, | |
| His childhood’s haunt of play, | |
| Where brightly through the beechen shade | |
| Their waters glanced away; | |
| They call’d him, with their sounding waves, | 35 |
| Back to his father’s hills and graves. | |
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| But, darkly mingling with the thought | |
| Of each familiar scene, | |
| Rose up a fearful vision, fraught | |
| With all that lay between,— | 40 |
| The Arab’s lance, the desert’s gloom, | |
| The whirling sands, the red simoon! | |
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| Where was the glow of power and pride? | |
| The spirit born to roam? | |
| His weary heart within him died | 45 |
| With yearnings for his home; | |
| All vainly struggling to repress | |
| That gush of painful tenderness. | |
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| He wept—the stars of Afric’s heaven | |
| Beheld his bursting tears, | 50 |
| E’en on that spot where fate had given | |
| The meed of toiling years. | |
| O happiness! how far we flee | |
| Thine own sweet paths in search of thee! | |
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