Classic Poem

How did He fashion it, He who made it—
This mysterious dreamy land,
Here an oasis with palms to shade it,
Here a desert of tawny sand?

How did He fashion it, how did He make it—
This enchanted land of the Nile?
With a thunder-peal or a sigh did He make it?
A lightning flash, or a loving smile?

Æons ago, in dreams He saw it,
Lying in unborn beauty afar;
Æons long He toiled to draw it
Out of the core of a burning star.

Terrace by terrace, He built the mountains
Out of the silt of the ancient sea;
Cloudlet by cloudlet, He made the fountains
To feed the river that was to be.

He made the Nile; He filled and fraught it
With golden loads of a magic mire;
He moulded the land, he forged and wrought it,
Now by earthquake, and now by fire.

Age by age He brought to prepare it
A sculptor's skill and a painter's art,
Then, He thought in His love to share it,
And made a burning and beating heart.

He made thy heart that thy heart might fill it
With dreams of beauty that He had made;
He made thy soul that His art might thrill it
With palm, and lotus, and sun, and shade.

And I who watch thee as thou art dreaming
The dream of the mind that made thee whole,
Discern His love in thy spirit gleaming,
In thy fair spirit discern His soul,

And know to what end His art has striven
In the desert below, and the sky above,—
Know that the beauty of earth is given
To the heart of man by the Hand of Love.

Praise, O praise to the Artist Giver,
Who made the earth, and the sky, and the sea,
And the lovely dream of the flowing river,
And the lovelier living dream of thee.

Here upon earth there is no abiding,
Still like the Nile life floweth on,
And still our lives are floating, and gliding,
Into the twilight, out of the dawn.

Yet in life can be no forgetting
Of the desert's peace, of the river's calm,
Of thy lips and eyes in their lovely setting
Of maize, and lotus, and corn, and palm.