The Rape of Proserpine/Book 4
THE NILE.
THE NILE.
A FRAGMENT.
Thrice blest the man whose ploughshare cleaves the plain
Of fertile Egypt: he nor cloud nor rain
Invokes, nor northern blasts that 'coldly blow,
Nor hails the light of Iris' humid bow.
The favour'd region has no need of these;
It scorns the showers, it recks not of the breeze;
Content to see perpetual plenty smile
From its own waters, its redundant Nile.
Inured to heats of Cancer's burning zone,
He swiftly rushes from a source unknown;
Long vainly sought, and undiscovered still,
Which none have seen a fount, or issuing rill.
No witness stood by that mysterious birth,
Where other heavens o'er-arch another earth;
Whence forth he springs his wand'ring course to run,
Where Æthiop kingdoms blacken in the sun;
O'er the parch'd lands his cooling dews bestows,
And slakes the thirst of nations as he flows.
Of him Syene dark, and Meröe drink,
The savage Blemyæ crowd about his brink:
Th' unbridled Garamant, and Girrha's child,
Strong beast-destroyer in the mountains wild,
Whose cavern dwelling ebon boughs adorn,
And ivory tusks, from vanquished monsters torn.
They too—the tribe whose well protected hair
With ordered shafts is set around—are there.
But why and when do those strange waters rise?
No melting ice upon their bosom lies,
No helpful showers the mountain ridge supplies:
When other streams with wintry rains increase,
Then rests the Nile within his banks in peace:
When they in turn scarce trickle through the sand,
Then swells the Nile, and spreads o'er all the land.
As though what summer reft from every river,
'Twere Nature's use collected to deliver
Into one Nile—that all the world might seem
Amerced to furnish forth the mighty stream.
And so, when Sirius arms the solar blaze,
And heaven is burning with the potent rays,
When the dried earth is shrunk in every vein,
And feebly strives some moisture to retain,
The Nile, reversing all, beholds his winter reign.
Then forth he bursts in high exulting mood,
And pours far wider than the seas his flood.
Th' expectant swains accept the boon he yields;
Their oars resound along the watery fields:
"While oft the shepherd—roused from noon-day sleep
Views fold and flock borne downward to the deep.
&c. &c