Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt

It was not day. Yet the long night was waning,
And the spent nations watched it less forlorn.

Out of the silence of the joyless ages
A voice had spoken, such as the first bird
Speaks to the woods, before the morning wakens, —
And the World starting to its feet had heard.

Men hailed it as a prophecy. Its utterance
Was in that tongue divine the Orient knew.
It spoke of hope. Men hailed it as a brother's.
It spoke of happiness. Men deemed it true.

There in the land of Death, where toil is cradled,
That tearful Nile, unknown to Liberty,
It spoke in passionate tones of human freedom,
And of those rights of Man which cannot die, —

– Till from the cavern of long fear, whose portals
Had backward rolled, and hardly yet aloud,
Men prisoned stole like ghosts and joined the chorus,
And chaunted trembling, each man in his shroud.

Justice and peace, the brotherhood of nations, —
Love and goodwill of all mankind to man, —
These were the words they caught and echoed strangely,
Deeming them portions of some Godlike plan, —

A plan thus first to their own land imparted.
They did not know the irony of Fate,
The mockery of man's freedom, and the laughter
Which greets a brother's love from those that hate.

Oh for the beauty of hope's dreams! The childhood
Of that old land, long impotent in pain,
Cast off its slough of sorrow with its silence,
And laughed and shouted and grew new again.

And in the streets, where still the shade of Pharaoh
Stalked in his sons, the Mamelukian horde,
Youth greeted youth with words of exultation
And shook his chains and clutched as for a sword.

Student and merchant, – Jew, and Copt, and Moslem, —
All whose scarred backs had bent to the same rod, —
Fired with one mighty thought, their feuds forgotten,
Stood hand in hand and praising the same God.

III

I have a thing to say. But how to say it?
As in the days of Moses in the land,
God sent a man of prayer before his people
To speak to Pharaoh, and to loose his hand.

Injustice, that hard step-mother of heroes,
Had taught him justice. Him the sight of pain
Moved into anger, and the voice of weeping
Made his eyes weep as for a comrade slain.

A soldier in the bands of his proud masters
It was his lot to serve. But of his soul
None owned allegiance save the Lord of Armies.
No worship from his God's might him cajole.

Strict was his service. In the law of Heaven
He comfort took and patient under wrong.
And all men loved him for his heart unquailing,
And for the words of pity on his tongue.

Knowledge had come to him in the night-watches,
And strength with fasting, eloquence with prayer.
He stood a Judge from God before the strangers,
The one just man among his people there.

Strongly he spoke: "Now, Heaven be our witness!
Egypt this day has risen from her sleep.
She has put off her mourning and her silence.
It was no law of God that she should weep.

"It was no law of God nor of the Nations
That in this land, alone of the fair Earth,
The hand that sowed should reap not of its labour,
The heart that grieved should profit not of mirth.

"How have we suffered at the hands of strangers,
Binding their sheaves, and harvesting their wrath!
Our service has been bitter, and our wages
Hunger and pain and nakedness and drouth.

"Which of them pitied us? Of all our princes,
Was there one Sultan listened to our cry?
Their palaces we built, their tombs, their temples.
What did they build but tombs for Liberty?

"To live in ignorance, to die by service;
To pay our tribute and our stripes receive:
This was the ransom of our toil in Eden,
This, and our one sad liberty – to grieve.