Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Africa: Vol. XXIV. 1876–79.
The Nile
By Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809–1885)O
Thou patriarch river! on whose ample breast
We dwelt the time that full at once could seem
Of busiest travel and of softest rest:
No wonder that thy being was so blest
That gratitude of old to worship grew,
That as a living god thou wert addrest,
And to itself the immediate agent drew
To one creative power the feelings only due.
Thou art and makest Egypt: were thy source
But once arrested in its bubbling youth,
Or turned extravagant to some new course,
By a fierce crisis of convulsive force,
Egypt would cease to be,—the intrusive sand
Would smother its rich fields without remorse,
And scarce a solitary palm could stand
To tell, that barren vale was once the wealthiest land.
His matin banners in the eastern sky,
Than at the reckoned period are begun
Thy operations of fertility:
Through the long sweep thy bosom swelling high
Expands between the sandy mountain chains,
The walls of Libya and of Araby,
Till in the active virtue it contains
The desert bases sink and rise prolific plains.
No animate sign, relieves the dismal strand,
Such it might seem our orb’s first substance was,
Ere touched by God with generative hand;
Yet at one step we reach the teeming land,
Lying fresh-green beneath the scorching sun,
As succulent as if at its command
It held all rains that fall, all brooks that run,
And this, O generous Nile! is thy vast benison.
As never other stream on earth beside?
Where are thy founts of being, thus empowered
To form a nation by thy annual tide?
The charts are silent; history guesses wide;
Adventure from thy quest returns ashamed;
And each new age, in its especial pride,
Believes that it shall be as that one named,
In which to all mankind thy birthplace was proclaimed.
Races of men in lofty knowledge schooled,
Though warriors, winning fame through shock and slaughter,
Sesostris to Napoleon, here have ruled:
Yet has the secret of thy sources fooled
The monarch’s strength, the labors of the wise,
And, though the world’s desire has never cooled,
Our practised vision little more descries
Than old Herodotus beheld with simple eyes.
A venerating love attends thee still,
And the poor fellah, from thee torn away,
Feels a strange yearning his rude bosom fill;
Like the remembered show of lake and hill,
That wrings the Switzer’s soul, though fortune smile,
Thy mirage haunts him, uncontrolled by will,
And wealth or war in vain the heart beguile
That clings to its mud-hut and palms beside the Nile.