A LAND of Dreams and Sleep,—a poppied land!
With skies of endless calm above her head,
The drowsy warmth of summer noonday shed
Upon her hills, and silence stern and grand
Throughout her Desert’s temple-burying sand.
Before her threshold, in their ancient place,
With closéd lips, and fixed, majestic face,
Noteless of Time, her dumb colossi stand.
O, pass them not with light, irreverent tread;
Respect the dream that builds her fallen throne,
And soothes her to oblivion of her woes.
Hush! for she does but sleep; she is not dead:
Action and Toil have made the world their own,
But she hath built an altar to Repose.
Nubia is the area around the River Nile which straddles the south of Egypt and the north of Sudan. Much of Nubia was drowned when the Aswan High Dam was built.
Most poems about this region are about Aswan and the Ancient Egyptian sites around it like Philae and Abu Simbel. You can read some of those poems on the Poetry Atlas here.
Lake Nasser now covers much of Nubia. The Lake was formed by the rising waters of the Nile, blocked by the Aswan High Dam