When we love anything, we love to be able to say of the object of our devotion, "There is nothing like it." Now, in all Egypt, and I suppose in all the world there is nothing just like Philae. There are temples, yes; but where else is there a bouquet of gracious buildings such as these gathered in such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And where else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility? Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from the wastes of Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt. It roars no longer. But still the masses of the rocks, and still the amber and the yellow sands, and still the iron-colored hills, keep guard round Philae. And still, despite the vulgar desecration that has turned Shellal into a workmen's suburb and dowered it with a railway-station, there is a mystery in Philae, and the sense of isolation that only an island gives. Even now one can forget in Philae--forget, after a while, and in certain parts of its buildings, the presence of the grey disease; forget the threatening of the altruists, who desire to benefit humanity by clearing as much beauty out of humanity's abiding- place as possible; forget the fact of the railway, except when the shriek of the engine floats over the water to one's ears; forget economic problems, and the destruction that their solving brings upon the silent world of things whose "use," denied, unrecognized, or laughed at, to man is in their holy beauty, whose mission lies not upon the broad highways where tramps the hungry body, but upon the secret, shadowy byways where glides the hungry soul.
Yes, one can forget even now in the hall of the temple of Isis, where the capricious graces of color, where, like old and delicious music in the golden strings of a harp, dwells a something--what is it? A murmur, or a perfume, or a breathing?--of old and vanished years when forsaken gods were worshipped. And one can forget in the chapel of Hathor, on whose wall little Horus is born, and in the grey hounds' chapel beside it. One can forget, for one walks in beauty.
Lovely are the doorways in Philae, enticing are the shallow steps that lead one onward and upward; gracious the yellow towers that seem to smile a quiet welcome. And there is one chamber that is simply a place of magic--the hall of the flowers.
It is this chamber which always makes me think of Philae as a lovely temple of dreams, this silent, retired chamber, where some fabled princess might well have been touched to a long, long sleep of enchantment, and lain for years upon years among the magical flowers-- the lotus, and the palm, and the papyrus.
In my youth it made upon me an indelible impression. Through intervening years, filled with many new impressions, many wanderings, many visions of beauty in other lands, that retired, painted chamber had not faded from my mind--or shall I say from my heart? There had seemed to me within it something that was ineffable, as in a lyric of Shelley's there is something that is ineffable, or in certain pictures of Boecklin, such as "The Villa by the Sea." And when at last, almost afraid and hesitating, I came into it once more, I found in it again the strange spell of old enchantment.
It seems as if this chamber had been imagined by a poet, who had set it in the centre of the temple of his dreams. It is such a spontaneous chamber that one can scarcely imagine it more than a day and a night in the building. Yet in detail it is lovely; it is finished and strangely mighty; it is a lyric in stone, the most poetical chamber, perhaps, in the whole of Egypt. For Philae I count in Egypt, though really it is in Nubia.
One who has not seen Philae may perhaps wonder how a tall chamber of solid stone, containing heavy and soaring columns, can be like a lyric of Shelley's, can be exquisitely spontaneous, and yet hold a something of mystery that makes one tread softly in it, and fear to disturb within it some lovely sleeper of Nubia, some Princess of the Nile. He must continue to wonder. To describe this chamber calmly, as I might, for instance, describe the temple of Derr, would be simply to destroy it. For things ineffable cannot be fully explained, or not be fully felt by those the twilight of whose dreams is fitted to mingle with their twilight. They who are meant to love with ardor /se passionnent pour la passion/. And they who are meant to take and to keep the spirit of a dream, whether it be hidden in a poem, or held in the cup of a flower, or enfolded in arms of stone, will surely never miss it, even though they can hear roaring loudly above its elfin voice the cry of directed waters rushing down to Upper Egypt.
How can one disentangle from their tapestry web the different threads of a spell? And even if one could, if one could hold them up, and explain, "The cause of the spell is that this comes in contact with this, and that this, which I show you, blends with, fades into, this," how could it advantage any one? Nothing could be made clearer, nothing be really explained. The ineffable is, and must ever remain, something remote and mysterious.
