Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/597

Rh An hour later we were ascending the Nile, and as I stood upon the deck of the steamer, and watched the fading domes and minarets of Cairo, I thought we had seen the beauty and the deformity of the Moslem faith—the glory and the shame of the pilgrimage to Mecca.

OME, let us burst the cerements and the shroud,
 * And with the livelong year renew our breath,

Far from the darkness of the city's cloud
 * Which hangs above us like the pall of Death:

Haste, let us leave the shadow of his wings!
 * Off from our cares, a stolen, happy time!
 * Come where the skies are blue, the uplands green;
 * For hark! the robin sings
 * Even here, blithe herald, his auroral rhyme.
 * Foretelling joy, and June his sovereign queen.

See, in our pavéd courts her missal scroll
 * Is dropped astealth, and every verdant line,

Emblazoned round with Summer's aureole,
 * Pictures to eager eyes, like thine and mine,

Her trees new-leaved and hillsides far away.
 * Ransom has come: out from this vaulted town,
 * Poor prisoners of a giant old and blind,
 * Into the breezy day.
 * Fleeing the sights and sounds that wear us down.
 * And in the fields our ancient solace find!

Again, I hunger for the living wood,
 * The laurelled crags, the hemlocks hanging wide.

The rushing stream that will not be withstood,
 * Bound forward to wed him with the river's tide: