He cried to Egypt:
"Come to prayer! Come to prayer! There is no god but God. There is no
god but God."
The days of the gods were dead, and their ruined temple echoed with
the proclamation of the one god of the Moslem world. "Come to prayer!
Come to prayer!" The sun began to sink.
"Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me."
The voice of the muezzin died away. There was a silence; and then, as
if in answer to the cry from the minaret, I heard the chime of the
angelus bell from the Catholic church of Luxor.
"Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark."
I sat very still. The light was fading; all the yellow was fading,
too, from the columns and the temple walls. I stayed till it was dark;
and with the dark the old gods seemed to resume their interrupted
sway. And surely they, too, called to prayer. For do not these ruins
of old Egypt, like the muezzin upon the minaret, like the angelus bell
in the church tower, call one to prayer in the night? So wonderful are
they under stars and moon that they stir the fleshly and the worldly
desires that lie like drifted leaves about the reverence and the
aspiration that are the hidden core of the heart. And it is released
from its burden; and it awakes and prays.
