And in this great courtyard there are swarms of living birds,
twittering in the sunshine. Through the doorway between the towers one
sees a glimpse of a native village with the cupolas of a mosque.
I stood and looked at the cupolas for a moment. Then I turned, and
forgot for a time the life of the world without--that men, perhaps, were
praying beneath those cupolas, or praising the Moslem's God. For when I
turned, I felt, as I have said, as if all the worship of the world must
be concentrated here. Standing far down the open court, in the full
sunshine, I could see into the first hypostyle hall, but beyond only a
darkness--a darkness which led me on, in which the further chambers of
the house divine were hidden. As I went on slowly, the perfection of
the plan of the dead architects was gradually revealed to me, when the
darkness gave up its secrets; when I saw not clearly, but dimly, the
long way between the columns, the noble columns themselves, the gradual,
slight upward slope--graduated by genius; there is no other word--which
led to the sanctuary, seen at last as a little darkness, in which all
the mystery of worship, and of the silent desires of men, was surely
concentrated, and kept by the stone for ever. Even the succession of the
darknesses, like shadows growing deeper and deeper, seemed planned by
some great artist in the management of light, and so of shadow effects.
The perfection of form is in Edfu, impossible to describe, impossible
not to feel.
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