Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: III. Places | | The Nile | | Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) |
| | | IT flows through old, hushed Ægypt and its sands, | |
| Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream; | |
| And times and things, as in that vision, seem | |
| Keeping along it their eternal stands,— | |
| Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands | 5 |
| That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme | |
| Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, | |
| The laughing queen that caught the world’s great hands. | |
| Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, | |
| As of a world left empty of its throng, | 10 |
| And the void weighs on us; and then we wake, | |
| And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along | |
| ’Twixt villages, and think how we shall take | |
| Our own calm journey on for human sake. | | | | |
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