Art, which gives to us a second and a more withdrawn
life, opening to us a door through which we pass to our dreams, may
well imitate life in this.
IV
ABYDOS
Through a long and golden noontide, and on into an afternoon whose
opulence of warmth and light it seemed could never wane, I sat alone,
or wandered gently quite alone, in the Temple of Seti I. at Abydos.
Here again I was in a place of the dead. In Egypt one ever seeks the
dead in the sunshine, black vaults in the land of the gold. But here
in Abydos I was accompanied by whiteness. The general effect of Seti's
mighty temple is that it is a white temple when seen in full sunshine
and beneath a sky of blinding blue. In an arid place it stands, just
beyond an Egyptian village that is a maze of dust, of children, of
animals, and flies. The last blind houses of the village, brown as
brown paper, confront it on a mound, and as I came toward it a girl-
child swathed in purple with ear-rings, and a twist of orange
handkerchief above her eyes, full of cloud and fire, leaned from a
roof, sinuously as a young snake, to watch me. On each side,
descending, were white, ruined walls, stretched out like defaced white
arms of the temple to receive me. I stood still for a moment and
looked at the narrow, severely simple doorway, at the twelve broken
columns advanced on either side, white and greyish white with their
right angles, their once painted figures now almost wholly colorless.
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