A Thought Of The Nile

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,--
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

James Henry Leigh Hunt

James Henry Leigh Hunt was an English critic, essayist, and poet, born on October 19, 1784, in Southgate, London. He was a central figure of the Romantic movement and is best known for his poems 'Jenny Kissed Me' and 'Abou Ben Adhem.' Hunt also co-founded the influential literary periodical, 'The Examiner', in 1808. He had a significant impact on his contemporaries, including John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Hunt passed away on August 28, 1859, in Putney, London.

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Nun, The

James Henry Leigh Hunt, Simple Poetry

On Receiving A Crown Of Ivy From John Keats

James Henry Leigh Hunt, Simple Poetry

May And The Poets

James Henry Leigh Hunt, Simple Poetry

Fairies' Song

James Henry Leigh Hunt, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Nile

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,--
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

James Henry Leigh Hunt

The Nile

Out of the unknown South,
Through the dark lands of drouth,
    Far wanders ancient Nile in slumber gliding:
Clear-mirrored in his dream
The deeds that haunt his stream
    Flash out and fade like stars in midnight sliding.
Long since, before the life of man
    Rose from among the lives that creep,
With Time's own tide began
    That still mysterious sleep,
    Only to cease when Time shall reach the eternal deep.

From out his vision vast
The early gods have passed,
    They waned and perished with the faith that made them;
The long phantasmal line
Of Pharaohs crowned divine
    Are dust among the dust that once obeyed them.
Their land is one mute burial mound,
    Save when across the drifted years
Some chant of hollow sound,
    So...

Henry John Newbolt

The Valley Of The Nile.

Far as the sight can reach, beneath as clear
And blue a heaven as ever blest this sphere,
Gardens and pillared streets and porphyry domes
And high-built temples, fit to be the homes
Of mighty gods, and pyramids whose hour
Outlasts all time, above the waters tower!

Then, too, the scenes of pomp and joy that make
One theatre of this vast peopled lake,
Where all that Love, Religion, Commerce gives
Of life and motion, ever moves and lives,
Here, up in the steps of temples, from the wave
Ascending, in procession slow and grave,
Priests in white garments go, with sacred wands
And silver cymbals gleaming in their hands:
While there, rich barks--fresh from those sunny tracts
Far off, beyond the sounding cataracts--
Glide with their precious lading to the sea,

Thomas Moore

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Egyptian Tomb.

Pomp of Egypt's elder day,
Shade of the mighty passed away,
Whose giant works still frown sublime
'Mid the twilight shades of Time;
Fanes, of sculpture vast and rude,
That strew the sandy solitude,
Lo! before our startled eyes,
As at a wizard's wand, ye rise,
Glimmering larger through the gloom!
While on the secrets of the tomb,
Rapt in other times, we gaze,
The Mother Queen of ancient days,
Her mystic symbol in her hand,
Great Isis, seems herself to stand.

From mazy vaults, high-arched and dim,
Hark! heard ye not Osiris' hymn?
And saw ye not in order dread
The long procession of the dead?
Forms that the night of years concealed,
As by a flash, are here revealed;
Chiefs who sang the victor song;
Sceptred kings, - a shadowy throng...

William Lisle Bowles

The Future

A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall re...

Matthew Arnold