voices which seem to express the essence of the east, loved sweet odors,
loved sweet women--do we not see him sitting to receive offerings with
his wife beside him?--loved the clear nights and the radiant days that
in Egypt make glad the heart of man. He must have loved the splendid
gift of life, and used it completely. And so little Ali had very right
to make his sole obeisance at Thi's delicious tomb, from which death
itself seems banished by the soft and embracing radiance of the almost
living walls.

This delicate cheerfulness, a quite airy gaiety of life, is often
combined in Egypt, and most beautifully and happily combined, with
tremendous solidity, heavy impressiveness, a hugeness that is well-nigh
tragic; and it supplies a relief to eye, to mind, to soul, that is sweet
and refreshing as the trickle of a tarantella from a reed flute
heard under the shadows of a temple of Hercules. Life showers us with
contrasts. Art, which gives to us a second and a more withdrawn life,
opening to us a door through which we pass to our dreams, may well
imitate life in this.




IV

ABYDOS

Through a long and golden noontide, and on into an afternoon whose
opulence of warmth and light it seemed could never wane, I sat alone,
or wandered gently quite alone, in the Temple of Seti I. at Abydos. Here
again I was in a place of the dead. In Egypt one ever seeks the dead in