To the Nile

Bayard Taylor

Mysterious flood,—that through the silent sands   
  Hast wandered, century on century,   
Watering the length of green Egyptian lands,   
            Which were not, but for thee,—   
 
Art thou the keeper of that eldest lore,           
  Written ere yet thy hieroglyphs began,   
When dawned upon thy fresh, untrampled shore   
            The earliest life of man?   
 
Thou guardest temple and vast pyramid,   
  Where the gray Past records its ancient speech;           
But in thine unrevealing breast lies hid   
            What they refuse to teach.   
 
All other streams with human joys and fears   
  Run blended, o’er the plains of History:   
Thou tak’st no note of man; a thousand years           
            Are as a day to thee.   
 
What were to thee the Osirian festivals?   
  Or Memnon’s music on the Theban plain?   
The carnage, when Cambyses made thy halls   
            Ruddy with royal slain?           
 
Even then thou wast a God, and shrines were built   
  For worship of thine own majestic flood;   
For thee the incense burned,—for thee was spilt   
            The sacrificial blood.   
 
And past the bannered pylons that arose           
  Above thy palms, the pageantry and state,   
Thy current flowed, calmly as now it flows,   
            Unchangeable as fate.   
 
Thou givest blessing as a god might give,   
  Whose being is his bounty: from the slime           
Shaken from off thy skirts the nations live,   
            Through all the years of Time.   
 
In thy solemnity, thine awful calm,   
  Thy grand indifference of Destiny,   
My soul forgets its pain, and drinks the balm           
            Which thou dost proffer me.   
 
Thy godship is unquestioned still: I bring   
  No doubtful worship to thy shrine supreme;   
But thus my homage as a chaplet fling,   
            To float upon thy stream!   

Not surprisingly the Nile, the great river of antiquity and the longest river in the world, has inspired writers over millenia. The Poetry Atlas has mapped many poems about the River Nile.

Poetry Atlas has also mapped many poems about Egypt.


Main Location:

River Nile, Egypt

The Nile at Cairo, Egypt