A Dream of Egypt

Beside the lonely Nile,
I heard the whispering breeze
That sang beyond the desert’s rim
And thro’ the swaying trees.

It called me in the dusk
And in the sunset light,
And thro’ the purple dark I went
Out in the velvet night.

I seemed to sleep – and then,
I was awake at last
In olden Egypt, Love, with you
In that mysterious past.

Within the Sphinx’s solemn shade
In Pharaoh’s golden prime,
I fold you to my breast, dear heart,
And live Love’s glowing rhyme.
And Grief and Death are naught to us,
And naught to us is Time.

I know the wonder of your eyes,
The glory of your hair –
That perfumed darkness on your brow,
My joy and my despair.
Our love is one long ecstasy,
One glorious, white prayer.

Pomegranate is your mouth
And honey are your lips;
I plunder from the golden store –
A bee that sips and sips.

O Lily of delight,
O Jasmine-flower, you hold
The hoarded sweet of all the world,
And all Love’s fabled gold.

I envy every circlet on your arm,
I envy every flower in your hair;
O Love, the deep delight that each must know
The hours they linger there!

I envy every jewel on your throat,
And every bloom you crush beneath your feet.
O Love, would I might learn their magic joy,
Their rapture wild and sweet!

I wakened when the moon, with silver feet,
Swept down the purple sky;
Dear Love, ’twas but a dream – yet how complete –
A dream that cannot die.

You are not with me now; the palm-trees chime
A solemn song and low;
But we were lovers in that long-lost time….
Dear heart, it must be so.