JEBEL ATAKA;

THE MOUNTAIN OF DELIVERANCE:

Overlooking all those points of the Red Sea, at some one or other of which the Israelites must have crossed.

O VENERABLE Height, whose furrowed brow
The flood of Pharaoh mirrors: thou hast seen,
Save one great cycle which hath later been,
The holiest marvels ever wrought below.
For thou wast by when the dread pillar's glow
Came down unquivering to the yawning sea;
And all the mystery of its course to thee
Was bared, and all the tyrant's overthrow.
O sage and silent! mute from age to age,

Amid the questionings of foe and friend!
Behold, I read, as in the sacred page,

A word within thee, treasured to the end,"See thou tell no man this: " and whoso heeds

May deem that He was here, from whom that law proceeds.

ON A SOLITARY GRAVE,

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAMEL-TRACKS.

PEACE to thee, nameless One! His Whom, known of Him, 'twas never thine to know! peace He pour, And God for good remember him, who so Cared for thy relics when their strife was o'er! The burning blast shall hunt thee now no more : The wearying Wâdy lulls thee in its breast: The moon by night shall gild thy lonely rest, Nor chill thee with its beams as heretofore. Like howling tempests heard from fire-lit homes, The drudging camel's slow laborious tread Shall bring but soothing, when its tumult comes

Toiling at noon beside thy shaded bed.

And He-the ALONE-Who sees where Moses fell, Shall be thy neighbour here, thy friends, thy citadel.

THE SCENERY OF THE DESERT COAST,

ON A CLOUDY DAY.

Gen. i. 3-10.

LIGHT, and a sky, without its twittering flock;
Mountain, and plain, and flood; dry land and sea,
With rigour parted; every fruitful tree
Far, far from sight; down from the sterile rock
No brooklet moving; and the cloudy block
Of lifted vapour shutting out the sun :—
It is as if God's great Third Day, begun,
Had here been stayed by some mysterious shock,
And held immovable. And, Ali dear,

My Arab comrade, I behold in thee

The same stayed work :-a beam, whereby to steer Thy wavering choice; an open place, where He His word may utter; and a ridded space

For golden flower and fruit, when breathes again His grace.

HILLS AND FLOODS.

WITH equal force the seas and mountains awe,
Yet separate feelings on our hearts impress.
While earnest waves, at war with listlessness,
My frosted soul to quicker life would thaw,
The solemn stirless hills I never saw

But I was moved to sit me down and weep.
Say, O my Masters, when I slept the sleep
Wherein I learnt these mortal breaths to draw,
Did some hill-memory triumph in my mind.

Against the effacing bath? O let me glean, When mountains o'er me thus their charm unwind, That I some while the Vast and Calm have seen Of God's great Mountain-Throne, creation's stay, Before which seas arise, and serve, and pass away.*

* Rev. xxi. 1.

SELIM, THE CAMEL-DRIVER ;

OF THE TRIBE OF HAIWAT.

THE thirty days of Ramazan
Were slowly trailing by,
And Selim's fast unbroken ran
While light was in the sky;

For ne'er, from dawn to vesper gloom,
Or scantest crumb he knew,

Or breath of dear narcotic fume,
Or touch of quenching dew.

I saw him once on Cairo's plain,
As boomed the evening gun,
Fall prone and drink the foulest drain,
His day's abstaining done;