And
Where Else Are Just Such Delicate And, As I Have Said, Light And
Almost Feminine Elegance And Charm Set In The Midst Of Such Severe
Sterility?
Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from
the wastes of Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt.
It roars
no longer. But still the masses of the rocks, and still the amber and
the yellow sands, and still the iron-colored hills, keep guard round
Philae. And still, despite the vulgar desecration that has turned
Shellal into a workmen's suburb and dowered it with a railway-station,
there is a mystery in Philae, and the sense of isolation that only an
island gives. Even now one can forget in Philae - forget, after a
while, and in certain parts of its buildings, the presence of the grey
disease; forget the threatening of the altruists, who desire to
benefit humanity by clearing as much beauty out of humanity's abiding-
place as possible; forget the fact of the railway, except when the
shriek of the engine floats over the water to one's ears; forget
economic problems, and the destruction that their solving brings upon
the silent world of things whose "use," denied, unrecognized, or
laughed at, to man is in their holy beauty, whose mission lies not
upon the broad highways where tramps the hungry body, but upon the
secret, shadowy byways where glides the hungry soul.
Yes, one can forget even now in the hall of the temple of Isis, where
the capricious graces of color, where, like old and delicious music in
the golden strings of a harp, dwells a something - what is it?
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