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.