Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/277

 are entering; we seem to be getting nearer to the heart of things, to the warm beginnings of life; the earth is not dead, but sleepeth; it begins to breathe with the breath of God.

Then there is a tender vibration in the world of sound; the note of a bird, faint as if she hardly dared to hear the voice of her own singing, quivers for an instant in the deep solitude; to which follow hours of marching, when is heard in the distance the bleating of sheep, and after another long march the lowing of cattle; and then

there is a gentle murmur in the air; and on the straining ear comes the sweetest sound ever heard, that of human voices: and so we come back into the living, breathing world again.

I hardly know of anything to parallel this change, or wherewith to compare it. It is said that not far above the earth's surface it is intensely cold and dark; that the sun's rays must pass through the earth's atmosphere to give forth light and warmth. So it is that in passing into this new atmosphere we feel as if we were entering "the warm precincts of the cheerful day," to quote that exquisite line of Gray's Elegy, which seems as if written when the poet's eye was filled with "the light of setting suns." Indeed we may quote the whole stanza in exact reverse, as giving the perfect delineation of the change which comes over us:

 For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned. Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day. Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

Here "the warm precincts" are not behind, but before; the "longing" is not for that we leave, but for that we enter; and we return to "this pleasing, anxious being," which, however troubled with care, still is life — life never