Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/65

 Rh than anything else. The silence and solitude of the arid wilderness, which looks like a phantom of Chaos which God forgot at the beginning of things, suited my mind to perfection. I have been sick for it ever since I came to Luxor. I think with longing of its infinite vastness, of the air that blows over its leagues and leagues of lion-coloured sand, of the luminous blue sky that turns the horror of it into something divine. Never shall I forget returning one evening in the afterglow, when I understood Isaiah's 'The wilderness shall blossom like the rose,' for the waste turned a tender shell-pink, the wild ridge of syenite blushed crimson, and the arc of light spreading outwards from the horizon turned into the hues of an immense prism above the desolation it deified. Then, as the glow faded into lemon-colour, the little stars, faint and far between, looked down on the pitch-black sand. A few lights, shining here and there in the Bishereen camp, showed I was nearing Assouan. A tall woman with a pitcher on her head could be seen coming from the Nile. It was the hour when jackals and hyænas come out of their holes to drink of the river."

Neither Italy nor Egypt, however, afforded Mathilde more pleasure than the tranquil, rural beauty of the English midland counties. Her work on George Eliot had taken her to Warwickshire some years before; and Shakespeare associations now drew her to Stratford-on-Avon, which proved a perfect source of inspiration to her, many of the most beautiful poems of her later years dating from her visit. Another attraction appears to have been the neighbourhood of Dr. and Mrs. Philpot, who had a temporary residence at Stratford, and were among the best and kindest friends of her closing years. She says in a letter to the writer, dated September 14, 1894:—