Felicia Dorothea Hemans

The Traveller at the Source of the Nile

IN sunset’s light o’er Afric thrown,
	A wanderer proudly stood 
Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,
	Of Egypt’s awful flood; 
The cradle of that mighty birth, 
So long a hidden thing to earth.
 
He heard its life’s first murmuring sound,
	A low mysterious tone; 
A music sought, but never found
	By kings and warriors gone; 
He listen’d – and his heart beat high –   
That was the song of victory!
 
The rapture of a conqueror’s mood 
	Rush’d burning through his frame,
The depths of that green solitude 
	Its torrents could not tame,
Though stillness lay, with eve’s last smile,
Round those calm fountains of the Nile.
 
Night came with stars: – across his soul
	There swept a sudden change, 
Even at the pilgrim’s glorious goal,
	A shadow dark and strange, 
Breath’d from the thought, so swift fall 
O’er triumph’s hour – And is this all?
 
No more than this! – what seem’d it now
	First by that spring to stand? 
A thousand streams of lovelier flow
	Bathed his own mountain land! 
Whence, far o’er waste and ocean track,
Their wild sweet voices call’d him back.
 
They call’d him back to many a glade,
	His childhood’s haunt of play, 
There brightly through the beechen shade
	Their waters glanced away; 
They call’d him, with their sounding waves, 
Back to his fathers’ hills and graves.
 
But darkly mingling with the thought
	Of each familiar scene, 
Rose up a fearful vision, fraught
	With all that lay between; 
The Arab’s lance, the desert’s gloom, 
The whirling sands, the red simoom!
 
Where was the glow of power and pride? 
	The spirit born to roam?
His weary heart within him died 
	With yearnings for his home; 
All vainly struggling to repress 
That gush of painful tenderness.
 
He wept – the stars of Afric’s heaven
	Beheld his bursting tears, 
Even on that spot where fate ha given
	The meed of toiling years. 
– Oh happiness! how far we flee 
Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!