Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

CITIES OF EGYPT.

until the voice crying in the wilderness peopled the waste
with those who came from busy city and field to repent in
its solemn quiet. The old Egyptian hermits founded in
the desert the hardest monastic state, which surrendered
all the joys of life in exchange for the calm of the silent
valleys. For in those tremendous solitudes there is neither
sight nor sound to disturb the mind. In the mighty
rocks and the rolling hills, stretching far away to im-
measurable distance, not clothed by nature, untrod by
man, save in the rare tracks where his timorous uncertain
footprints are washed away by the first light air that stirs
the sand, under the luminous heavens, most of all when
the night has fallen, more than even in the midst of the
ocean, man seems conscious of the Divine Presence.
Nothing is between him and the heavens which open
their portals wide. The world need not be shut out,
with its changing shows, its restless movement, its many
voices of to-day : it is so far away that it is as though it
had never been. The scene which through countless
ages has known no change is full of the silence and the
rest of eternity.