She shakes her booty from her sapphire tresses
In gleeful guile,
As she in passing savagely caresses
The crouching Nile;
While everywhere, within her sight or call,
Along its banks or in its rushes tall,
All things are swooning in her leaden thrall,—
Yea, prostrate is the salamander, prostrate is the
crocodile
Aad when at intervals her madness takes
sudden turn,
A lull ensues and over Egypt breaks
The sacred urn
Of silence; while to quench her ancient thirst,
Which licked up every running stream and cursed
Every pool in cave or hollow nursed,
She plunges deep into the Nile and wonders why his
waters burn,
And wonders too when in the winnowed sands,
Out of the gloom
Of labyrinthine avenues and lands
Of mystic bloom,
Arise the scents of blossoms that have known
Ten thousand Khamsins, and were often blown
To dust ere Menes sat upon his throne—
The blossoms of the teeming depths that float above
the crest of doom.
30
