Night in the Desert
An Elegy at Helouan
Night in the secret East unlocks her
doors ;1
Quickly the leaden-coloured sluice she pours,2
Surging, the arabesque of sunset drowns,3
The whips and fans the scarlet scarves and crowns,4
The parting sun with fiery pencil scrawls5
Upon the enamelled heaven. Full she falls6
On the old and awful Desert, blind and dead,7
With dews and rains for mockery idly fed,8
Between the dun hills and the shining river9
Who lags his far-fetched burden to deliver ;10
An urn of meditative dusk she spills11
Into the vessel of the Arabian hills,12
And blurs the melancholy Pyramids :13
My gazing eyes grow weak to lift their lids.14
This way perhaps the swarthy slaveries went,15
Myriad-footed, creeping at the rope,16
A monstrous man-compacted instrument,17
Sweet lives made misery for an idle hope18
Of sovereignty in death, to heave one pile19
A little higher than the rest, awhile20
Longer defer the inevitable dust,21
And build Not yet, not yet ! against Thou must.22
And look, his grave is fly-blown by the mob,23
Eager to scan, to desecrate, to rob ;24
The secret.of his sepulchre proclaimed25
To every curious alien unashamed ;26
And, with his vessels and his gems, himself27
Obscenely pilloried on a showroom shelf !28
Happier than this the unregarded slave29
Who dropped aweary in a nameless grave ;30
Happier the poor whose cemetery fills31
Yon bay among the brown Arabian hills,32
Each with a pair of tutelary stones33
Presiding, head and feet, to watch his bones :34
And when the suns that suck the Desert’s veins,35
When brush of winds and quiet biting rains,36
Which seem to do no hurt and never spare,37
Disperse the weak memorial on the air,38
Better to know thy former human heart39
And all that loved laborious mortal part40
Drift from the mouldering ark to meet the sand41
And pass incorporate with thy native land !42
The stone, the tree, the fountain—these shall be43
A quiet anchor for the soul of thee44
Riding the harbour-calms at home and free !45
Dim as the card-built cities of a dream46
The sprawling hovels of the hamlet gleam ;47
Quick through the dusk the starry needles quiver48
Upon the dun hills and the shoaling river.49