lotus-flowers, that close above their heads,
Push their light barks, and hid, as in a bower,
Sing, talk, or sleep away the sultry hour;
While haply, not far off, beneath a bank
Of blossoming acacias, many a prank
Is play’d in the cool current by a train
Of laughing nymphs, lovely as she, whose chain
Around two conquerors of the world was cast,
But, for a third too feeble, broke at last!
Enchanted with the whole scene, I lingered on my voyage, visiting all those luxurious and venerable places, whose names have been consecrated by the wonder of ages. At Saïs I was present during her Festival of Lamps, and read, by the blaze of innumerable lights, those sublime words [pg 36]on the temple of Neitha: “I am all that has been, that is, and that will be, and no man hath ever lifted my veil.” I wandered among the prostrate obelisks of Heliopolis, and saw, not without a sigh, the sun smiling over her ruins, as if in mockery of the mass of perishable grandeur, that had once called itself, in its pride, “The City of the Sun.” But to the Isle of the Golden Venus was my fondest pilgrimage;—and as I explored its shades, where bowers are the only temples, I felt how far more fit to form the shrine of a Deity are the ever-living stems of the garden and the grove, than the most precious columns that the inanimate quarry can supply.
Every where new pleasures, new interests awaited me; and though Melancholy, as usual, stood always near, her shadow fell but half-way over my vagrant path, and left the rest more welcomely brilliant from the contrast. To relate my various adventures, during this short voyage, would only detain me from events, far, far more [pg 37]worthy of record. Amidst such endless variety of attractions, the great object of my journey was forgotten;—the mysteries of this land of the sun were, to me, as much mysteries as ever, and I had as yet been initiated in nothing but its pleasures.
It was not till that evening, when I first stood before the Pyramids of Memphis, and saw them towering aloft, like the watch-towers of Time, from whose summit, when he expires, he will look his last,—it was not till this moment that the great secret, of which I had dreamed, again rose, in all its inscrutable darkness, upon my thoughts. There was a solemnity in the sunshine that rested upon those monuments—a stillness, as of reverence, in the air around them, that stole, like the music of past times, into my heart. I thought what myriads of the wise, the beautiful, and the brave, had sunk into dust since earth first beheld those wonders; and, in the sadness of my soul, I exclaimed,—“Must man alone, then, perish? must [pg 38]minds and hearts be annihilated, while pyramids endure? Death, Death, even on these everlasting tablets,—the only approach to immortality that kings themselves could purchase,—thou hast written our doom, saying, awfully and intelligibly, ‘There is, for man, no eternal mansion, but the tomb!’ ”
My heart sunk at the thought; and, for the moment, I yielded to that desolate feeling, which overspreads the soul that hath no light from the future. But again the buoyancy of my nature prevailed, and again, the willing dupe of vain dreams, I deluded myself into the belief of all that I most wished, with that happy facility which makes imagination stand in place of happiness. “Yes,” I cried, “immortality must be within man’s reach; and, as wisdom alone is worthy of such a blessing, to the wise alone must the secret have been revealed. Deep, it is said, under yonder pyramid, has for ages lain concealed the Table of Emerald, on which [pg 39]the Thrice-Great Hermes engraved, before the flood, the secret of Alchemy, that gives gold at will. Why may not the mightier, the more god-like secret, that gives life at will, be recorded there also? It was by the power of gold, of endless gold, that the kings, who repose in those massy structures, scooped earth to the centre, and raised quarries into the air, to provide themselves with tombs that might outstand the world. Who can tell but that the gift of immortality was also theirs? who knows but that they themselves, triumphant over decay, still live—those mansions, which we call tombs, being rich and everlasting palaces, within whose depths, concealed from this withering world, they still wander, with the few who are sharers of their gift, through a sunless, but illuminated, elysium of their own? Else, wherefore those structures? wherefore that subterraneous realm, by which the whole valley of Egypt is undermined? Why, else, those labyrinths, which none [pg 40]of earth hath ever beheld—which none of heaven, except that God, with the finger on his hushed lip, hath trodden!”
While I indulged in these dreams, the sun, half sunk beneath the horizon, was taking, calmly and gloriously, his leave of the Pyramids,—as he had done, evening after evening, for ages, till they had become familiar to him as the earth itself. On the side turned to his ray they now presented a front of dazzling whiteness, while, on the other, their great shadows, lengthening to the eastward, looked like the first steps of Night, hastening to envelope the hills of Araby in her shade.
No sooner had the last gleam of the sun disappeared, than, on every house-top in Memphis, gay, gilded banners were seen waving aloft, to proclaim his setting,—while a full burst of harmony pealed from all the temples along the shores.
Startled from my musing by these sounds, I at once recollected, that, on that very evening, the great festival of the Moon [pg 41]was to be celebrated. On a little island, half-way over between the gardens of Memphis and the eastern shore, stood the temple of that goddess,
Whose beams
Bring the sweet time of night-flowers and dreams.
Not the cold Dian of the North, who chains
In vestal ice the current of young veins;
But she, who haunts the gay, Bubastian grove,
And owns she sees, from her bright heav’n above,
Nothing on earth, to match that heav’n, but love!
Thus did I exclaim, in the words of one of their own Egyptian poets, as, anticipating the various delights of the festival, I cast away from my mind all gloomy thoughts, and, hastening to my little bark, in which I now lived, like a Nile-bird, on the waters, steered my course to the island-temple of the Moon.
[pg 42]
CHAP. V.
The rising of the Moon, slow and majestic, as if conscious of the honours that awaited her upon earth, was welcomed with a loud acclaim from every eminence, where multitudes stood watching for her first light. And seldom had she risen upon a scene more beautiful. Memphis,—still grand, though no longer the unrivalled Memphis, that had borne away from Thebes the crown of supremacy, and worn it undisputed through so many centuries,—now, softened by the moonlight that harmonised with her decline, shone forth among her lakes, her pyramids, and her shrines, like a dream of glory that was soon to pass away. Ruin, even now, was but too visible around her. The sands of the Libyan desert gained upon her like a sea; and, among solitary columns and sphinxes, already half sunk from sight, Time seemed to stand [pg 43]waiting, till all, that now flourished around, should fall beneath his desolating hand, like the rest.
On the waters all was life and gaiety. As far as eye could reach, the lights of innumerable boats were seen, studding, like rubies, the surface of the stream. Vessels of all kinds,—from the light coracle, built for shooting down the cataracts, to the large yacht that glides to the sound of flutes,—all were afloat for this sacred festival, filled with crowds of the young and the
