Egypt and its monuments . summit, come down, penetrate into its re-cesses, stand in the kings chamber, listen to the silencethere, feel it with your hands,—is it not tangible in thishot fastness of incorruptible death?—creep, like thesurreptitious midget you feel yourself to be, up thoselong and steep inclines of polished stone, watching thebloomy darkness of the narrow walls, the far-off pin-point of light borne by the Bedouin who guides you,hear the twitter of the bats that have their dwelling inthis monstrous gloom that man has made to shelter thething whose ambition could never be embalmed
Egypt and its monuments . summit, come down, penetrate into its re-cesses, stand in the kings chamber, listen to the silencethere, feel it with your hands,—is it not tangible in thishot fastness of incorruptible death?—creep, like thesurreptitious midget you feel yourself to be, up thoselong and steep inclines of polished stone, watching thebloomy darkness of the narrow walls, the far-off pin-point of light borne by the Bedouin who guides you,hear the twitter of the bats that have their dwelling inthis monstrous gloom that man has made to shelter thething whose ambition could never be embalmed, thoughthat, of all its qualities, should have been given here,in the land it dowered, a life perpetual. Now youknow the great Pyramid. You know that you canclimb it, that you can enter it. You have seen it fromall sides, under all aspects. It is familiar to you. No, it can never be that. With its more wonderfulcomrade, the Sphinx, it has the power peculiar, so itseems to me, to certain of the rock and stone monu- 14. THE PYRAMIDS ments of Egypt, of holding itself ever aloof, almost likethe soul of man which can retreat at will, like theBedouin retreating from you into the blackness of thePyramid, far up, or far down, where the pursuingstranger, unaided, cannot follow. 17 II THE SPHINX ONE day at sunset I saw a bird trying to playwith the Sphinx — a bird Hke a swallow, butwith a ruddy brown on its breast, a gleam ofblue somewhere on its wings. When I came to theedge of the sand basin where perhaps Khufu saw itlying nearly four thousand years before the birth ofChrist, the Sphinx and the bird were quite alone. Thebird flew near the Sphinx, whimsically turning this wayand that, flying now low, now high, but ever returningto the magnet which drew it, which held it, from whichit surely longed to extract some sign of recognition. Ittwittered, it poised itself in the golden air, with itsbright eyes fixed upon those eyes of stone which gazedbeyond it, beyond the land of Egypt,
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