To The Nile

Month after month the gathered rains descend

Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,

And from the desert’s ice-girt pinnacles

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.

Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

By Nile’s aereal urn, with rapid spells

Urging those waters to their mighty end.

O’er Egypt’s land of Memory floods are level

And they are thine, O Nile—and well thou knowest

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil

And fruits and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.

Beware, O Man—for knowledge must to thee,

Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.