Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt Part 31

Nay. Thou shalt lie with her as thou hast lain.

She shall bring shame upon thy face with all men.

She shall disease thee with her grief and fear.

Thou shalt grow sick and feeble in her ruin.

Thou shalt repay her to the last sad tear.

Her kindred shall surround thee with strange clamours, d.o.g.g.i.ng thy steps till thou shalt loathe their din.

The friends thou hast deceived shall watch in anger.

Thy children shall upbraid thee with thy sin.

All shall be counted thee a crime,--thy patience With thy impatience. Thy best thought shall wound.

Thou shalt grow weary of thy work thus fas.h.i.+oned, And walk in fear with eyes upon the ground.

The Empire thou didst build shall be divided.

Thou shalt be weighed in thine own balances Of usury to peoples and to princes, And be found wanting by the world and these.

They shall possess the lands by thee forsaken And not regret thee. On their seas no more Thy s.h.i.+ps shall bear destruction to the nations, Or thy guns thunder on a fenceless sh.o.r.e.

Thou hast no pity in thy day of triumph.

These shall not pity thee. The world shall move On its high course and leave thee to thy silence, Scorned by the creatures that thou couldst not love.

Thy Empire shall be parted, and thy kingdom.

At thy own doors a kingdom shall arise, Where freedom shall be preached and the wrong righted Which thy unwisdom wrought in days unwise.

Truth yet shall triumph in a world of justice.

This is of faith. I swear it. East and west The law of Man's progression shall accomplish Even this last great marvel with the rest.

Thou wouldst not further it. Thou canst not hinder.

If thou shalt learn in time thou yet shalt live.

But G.o.d shall ease thy hand of its dominion, And give to these the rights thou wouldst not give.

The nations of the East have left their childhood.

Thou art grown old. Their manhood is to come; And they shall carry on Earth's high tradition Through the long ages when thy lips are dumb,

Till all shall be wrought out. O Lands of weeping.

Lands watered by the rivers of old Time, Ganges and Indus and the streams of Eden, Yours is the future of the world sublime.

Yours was the fount of man's first inspiration, The well of wisdom whence he earliest drew.

And yours shall be the flood time of his reason, The stream of strength which shall his strength renew.

The wisdom of the West is but a madness, The fret of shallow waters in their bed.

Yours is the flow, the fulness of Man's patience The ocean of G.o.d's rest inherited.

And thou too, Egypt, mourner of the nations, Though thou hast died to-day in all men's sight, And though upon thy cross with thieves thou hangest, Yet shall thy wrong be justified in right.

'Twas meet one man should die for the whole people.

Thou wert the victim chosen to retrieve The sorrows of the Earth with full deliverance.

And, as thou diest these shall surely live.

Thy prophets have been scattered through the cities.

The seed of martyrdom thy sons have sown Shall make of thee a glory and a witness In all men's hearts held captive with thine own.

Thou shalt not be forsaken in thy children.

Thy righteous blood shall fructify the Earth.

The virtuous of all lands shall be thy kindred, And death shall be to thee a better birth.

Therefore I do not grieve. Oh hear me, Egypt!

Even in death thou art not wholly dead.

And hear me, England! Nay. Thou needs must hear me.

I had a thing to say. And it is said.

THE END