One feels it is drawing near to the heart,
and that the poor, doomed invalid may collapse at any moment.
Yes, there is much to make one sad at Philae. But how much of pure
beauty there is left--of beauty that merely protests against any further
outrage!
As there is something epic in the grandeur of the Lotus Hall at Karnak,
so there is something lyrical in the soft charm of the Philae temple.
Certain things or places, certain things in certain places, always
suggest to my mind certain people in whose genius I take delight--who
have won me, and moved me by their art. Whenever I go to Philae, the
name of Shelley comes to me. I scarcely could tell why. I have no
special reason to connect Shelley with Philae. But when I see that
almost airy loveliness of stone, so simply elegant, so, somehow,
spring-like in its pale-colored beauty, its happy, daffodil charm, with
its touch of the Greek--the sensitive hand from Attica stretched out
over Nubia--I always think of Shelley. I think of Shelley the youth who
dived down into the pool so deep that it seemed he was lost for ever to
the sun. I think of Shelley the poet, full of a lyric ecstasy, who was
himself like an embodied
"Longing for something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow."
Lyrical Philae is like a temple of dreams, and of all poets Shelley
might have dreamed the dream and have told it to the world in a song.
For all its solidity, there are a strange lightness and grace in the
temple of Philae; there is an elegance you will not find in the other
temples of Egypt.
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