Read "To the Nile" by John Keats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Son of the old moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while / A desert fills our seeing's inward span; / Nurse of swart nations since the world began, / Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile / Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil, / Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do; / 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste / Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew / Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste / The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, / And to the sea as happily dost haste.