And always
the dream is happy, and shot through with radiant light--light that is
as radiant as the colors in Philae's temple. The pylons of Ptolemy smile
at you as you go up or come down the river. And the people of Egypt
smile as they enter into your dream. A suavity, too, is theirs. I think
of them often as artists, who know their parts in the dream-play, who
know exactly their function, and how to fulfil it rightly. They sing,
while you are dreaming, but it is an under-song, like the murmur of an
Eastern river far off from any sea. It never disturbs, this music, but
it helps you in your dream. And they are softly gay. And in their eyes
there is often the gleam of sunshine, for they are the children--but not
grown men--of the sun. That, indeed, is one of the many strange things
in Egypt--the youthfulness of its age, the childlikeness of its almost
terrible antiquity. One goes there to look at the oldest things in the
world and to feel perpetually young--young as Philae is young, as a
lyric of Shelley's is young, as all of our day-dreams are young, as the
people of Egypt are young.
Oh, that Egypt could be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philae
could be preserved even as it is now! The spoilers are there,
those blithe modern spirits, so frightfully clever and capable, so
industrious, so determined, so unsparing of themselves and--of others!
Already they are at work "benefiting Egypt.
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