There Are Moments, Indeed, When I Identify Egypt With
Philae.
For in Philae one must dream; and on the Nile, too, one must
dream.
And always the dream is happy, and shot through with radiant
light - light that is as radiant as the colors in Philae's temple. The
pylons of Ptolemy smile at you as you go up or come down the river.
And the people of Egypt smile as they enter into your dream. A
suavity, too, is theirs. I think of them often as artists, who know
their parts in the dream-play, who know exactly their function, and
how to fulfil it rightly. They sing, while you are dreaming, but it is
an under-song, like the murmur of an Eastern river far off from any
sea. It never disturbs, this music, but it helps you in your dream.
And they are softly gay. And in their eyes there is often the gleam of
sunshine, for they are the children - but not grown men - of the sun.
That, indeed, is one of the many strange things in Egypt - the
youthfulness of its age, the childlikeness of its almost terrible
antiquity. One goes there to look at the oldest things in the world
and to feel perpetually young - young as Philae is young, as a lyric of
Shelley's is young, as all of our day-dreams are young, as the people
of Egypt are young.
Oh, that Egypt could be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philae
could be preserved even as it is now!
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