The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him come Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme.

He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed, He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty, and the waters sank.

He strode across the desert sand:  he reached the valley where you lay:  He waited till the dawn of day:  then touched your black breasts with his hand.

You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame:  you made the horned god your own:  You stood behind him on his throne:  you called him by his secret name.

You whispered monstrous oracles into the caverns of his ears:  With blood of goats and blood of steers you taught him monstrous miracles.

White Ammon was your bedfellow!  Your chamber was the steaming Nile!  And with your curved archaic smile you watched his passion come and go.

With Syrian oils his brows were bright:  and wide-spread as a tent at noon His marble limbs made pale the moon and lent the day a larger light.

His long hair was nine cubits’ span and coloured like that yellow gem Which hidden in their garment’s hem the merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of new-made wine:  The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure of his eyes.

His thick soft throat was white as milk and threaded with thin veins of blue:  And curious pearls like frozen dew were broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was too bright to look upon:  For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous ocean-emerald,

That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of the Colchian caves Had found beneath the blackening waves and carried to the Colchian witch.

Before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed corybants, And lines of swaying elephants knelt down to draw his chariot,

And lines of swarthy Nubians bare up his litter as he rode Down the great granite-paven road between the nodding peacock-fans.

The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon in their painted ships:  The meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite.

The merchants brought him cedar chests of rich apparel bound with cords:  His train was borne by Memphian lords:  young kings were glad to be his guests.

Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon’s altar day and night, Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through Ammon’s carven house—­and now

Foul snake and speckled adder with their young ones crawl from stone to stone For ruined is the house and prone the great rose-marble monolith!

Wild ass or trotting jackal comes and couches in the mouldering gates:  Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the fallen fluted drums.

And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced ape of Horus sits And gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars of the peristyle