Explore "The Spell of Egypt" by Robert Hichens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Why do you come to Egypt? Do you come to gain a dream, or to regain lost / dreams of old; to gild your life with the drowsy gold of romance, / to lose a creeping sorrow, to forget that too many of your hours are / sullen, grey, bereft? What do you wish of Egypt?
The Sphinx will not ask you, will not care. The Pyramids, lifting their / unnumbered stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held, still / hold, their secrets; but they do not seek for yours. The terrific / temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men, / crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their / brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose. The brown children / of the Nile, the toilers who sing their antique songs by the shadoof and / the sakieh, the dragomans, the smiling goblin merchants, the Bedouins / who lead your camel into the pale recesses of the dunes -- these will not / trouble themselves about your deep desires, your perhaps yearning hunger / of the heart and the imagination.