The Traveller at the Source of the Nile

In sunset’s light, o’er Afric thrown,   
  A wanderer proudly stood   
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,   
  Of Egypt’s awful flood,—   
The cradle of that mighty birth,           
So long a hidden thing to earth!   
 
He heard its life’s first murmuring sound,   
  A low, mysterious tone,—   
A music sought, but never found   
  By kings and warriors gone.           
He listened,—and his heart beat high:   
That was the song of victory!   
 
The rapture of a conqueror’s mood   
  Rushed burning through his frame,   
The depths of that green solitude           
  Its torrents could not tame;   
Though stillness lay, with eve’s last smile,   
Round those far fountains of the Nile.   
 
Night came with stars. Across his soul   
  There swept a sudden change:           
E’en at the pilgrim’s glorious goal,   
  A shadow dark and strange   
Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall   
O’er triumph’s hour,—and is this all?   
 
No more than this! What seemed it now           
  First by that spring to stand;   
A thousand streams of lovelier flow   
  Bathed his own mountain land!   
Whence, far o’er waste and ocean track,   
Their wild, sweet voices called him back.           
 
They called him back to many a glade,   
  His childhood’s haunt of play,   
Where brightly through the beechen shade   
  Their waters glanced away;   
They called him, with their sounding waves,           
Back to his father’s hills and graves.   
 
But, darkly mingling with the thought   
  Of each familiar scene,   
Rose up a fearful vision, fraught   
  With all that lay between,—           
The Arab’s lance, the desert’s bloom,   
The whirling sands, the red simoom!   
 
Where was the glow of power and pride?   
  The spirit born to roam?   
His altered heart within him died           
  With yearnings for his home!   
All vainly struggling to repress   
That gush of painful tenderness.   
 
He wept! The stars of Afric’s heaven   
  Beheld his bursting tears,           
E’en on that spot where fate had given   
  The meed of toiling years!   
O Happiness! how far we flee   
Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!