Keramos

AND now the winds that southward blow,   
And cool the hot Sicilian isle,   
Bear me away. I see below   
The long line of the Lybian Nile,   
Flooding and feeding the parched lands           
With annual ebb and overflow:   
A fallen palm whose branches lie   
Beneath the Abyssinian sky,   
Whose roots are in Egyptian sands.   
On either bank huge water-wheels,           
Belted with jars and dripping weeds,   
Send forth their melancholy moans,   
As if, in their gray mantles hid,   
Dead anchorites of the Thebaid   
Knelt on the shore and told their beads,           
Beating their breasts with loud appeals   
And penitential tears and groans.   
 
This city, walled and thickly set   
With glittering mosque and minaret,   
Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars           
The dreaming traveller first inhales   
The perfume of Arabian gales,   
And sees the fabulous earthen jars,   
Huge as were those wherein the maid   
Morgiana found the Forty Thieves           
Concealed in midnight ambuscade;   
And seeing more than half believes   
The fascinating tales that run   
Through all the Thousand Nights and One,   
Told by the fair Scheherezade.           
 
More strange and wonderful than these   
Are the Egyptian deities—   
Ammon, and Emoth, and the grand   
Osiris, holding in his hand   
The lotus; Isis, crowned and veiled;           
The sacred Ibis, and the Sphinx;   
Bracelets with blue-enamelled links;   
The Scarabee in emerald mailed,   
Or spreading wide his funeral wings;   
Lamps that perchance their night-watch kept           
O’er Cleopatra while she slept,—   
All plundered from the tombs of kings.

[Extract]