Those days the painted flags were down, the festal lamps untrimmed,
Mute at their stones the millers ground, silent the Nile boats skimmed:
And, through the land, lip passed to lip sad word of what would be,
From Nubia's golden mountains to the gateways of the Sea.
There, in the Palace Hall, where once her laugh had loudest been,
Where, but last Feast Day she had worn the wreath of Beauty's Queen,
She lay a lost but lovely thing, the wreath was on her brow:
Alas! the lotus could not match its chilly pallor now!
And ever as the orb of Day sank lower in the sky,
Her breath came fainter, and the life seemed fading from her eye.
