Poem by James Henry Leigh Hunt

The Nile

It flows through old hush'd Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands, —
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roam'd through the young earth, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam.
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

1. Bodryddan
2. A Thought or Two on Reading Pomfret's
3. Ariadne Waking
4. Sudden Fine Weather
5. Bellman's Verses for 1814

Henry Newbolt The Nile ("Out of the unknown South")

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