Isis Nursing Horus Gave Way To The Virgin And The Child.
But the
cycles spin away down "the ringing grooves of change." From Egypt has
passed away that decreed Christianity.
Now from the minaret the
muezzin cries, and in palm-shaded villages I hear the loud hymns of
earnest pilgrims starting on the journey to Mecca. And ever this
painted chamber shelters its mystery of poetry, its mystery of charm.
And still its marvellous colors are fresh as in the far-off pagan
days, and the opening lotus-flowers, and the closed lotus-buds, and
the palm and the papyrus, are on the perfect columns. And their
intrinsic loveliness, and their freshness, and their age, and the
mysteries they have looked on - all these facts are part of the spell
that governs us to-day. In Edfu one is enclosed in a wonderful
austerity. And one can only worship. In Philae one is wrapped in a
radiance of color and one can only dream. For there is coral-pink, and
there a wonderful green, "like the green light that lingers in the
west," and there is a blue as deep as the blue of a tropical sea; and
there are green-blue and lustrous, ardent red. And the odd fantasy in
the coloring, is not that like the fantasy in the temple of a dream?
For those who painted these capitals for the greater glory of Isis did
not fear to depart from nature, and to their patient worship a blue
palm perhaps seemed a rarely sacred thing.
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