Page:Poems Sigourney 1827.pdf/183

Rh  With staff in hand their beads to tell By every haunted stream and dell, Upon thy lake's lone edge to dream, To climb thy cliffs where eaglets scream, On Flodden-field, with pitying sigh Start at Lord Marmion's dying cry, Or through the outlaw's cavern steal, Or in Diana's footprints kneel, And find thy bound the deathless shrine Of bards and minstrelsy divine.

 

Rollin, in describing the fertility which the Nile dispenses to Egypt, remarks that the two small circular springs in Abyssinia, from whence it derives its source, are metaphorically called "its eyes."

In ancient Egypt's fruitful realm Joy made her most divine abode, Light boats with pleasure at the helm Amid her thousand islets row'd,   A thousand changing colours flow'd       Wide o'er her flowery meadows gay, And on her lofty temples glow'd      The radiance of the God of day,— From whence flow'd the gladness that kindled the smile? It darted like light from the eyes of the Nile.—

But now that beauty, life and grace From those delightful scenes have fled, Stern Desolation marks the place, The humbled flow'ret bows its head, 