ASSYRIAN NIGHT-SONG.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

THERE is naught, on either hand,
But the moon upon the sand.
Pale and glimmering, far and dim,
To the Desert's utmost rim,
Flows the inundating light
Over all the lands of Night.
Bel, the burning lord, has fled :
In her blue, uncurtained bed,
Ishtar, bending from above,
Seeks her Babylonian love.
Silver-browed, forever fair,
Goddess of the dusky hair
And the jewel-sprinkled breast,
Give me love, or give me rest!

I have wandered lone and far
As the ship of Izdubar,
When the gathered waters rose
High on Nizir's mountain snows,
Drifting where the torrent sped
Over life and glory dead.

Hear me now! I stretch my hands
From the moon-sea of the sands

Unto thee, or any star

That was guide to Izdubar!

Where the bulls with kingly heads

Guard the way to palace-beds,

Once I saw a woman go,

Swift as air and soft as snow,
Making swan and cypress one,
Steel and honey, night and sun-
Once of death I knew the sting:
Beauty queen-and I not king!

Where the Hanging Gardens soar
Over the Euphrates' shore,

And from palm and clinging vine
Lift aloft the Median pine,
Torches flame and wine is poured,
And the child of Bel is lord!
I am here alone with thee,
Ishtar, daughter of the Sea,
Who of woven dew and air
Spreadst an ocean, phantom-fair,
With a slow pulse beating through
Wave of air and foam of dew.
As I stand, I seem to drift
With its noiseless fall and lift,
While a veil of lightest lawn,
Or a floating form withdrawn,
Or a glimpse of beckoning hands
Gleams and fades above the sands.

Day, that mixed my soul with men,
Has it died forever, then?

Is there any world but this?

If the god deny his bliss,

And the goddess can not give,

What are gods, that men should live?

Lo! the sand beneath my feet

Hoards the bounty of its heat,
And thy silver cheeks I see
Bright with him who burns for thee.
Give the airy semblance form,
Bid the dream be near and warm;
Or, if dreams but flash and die
As a mock to heart and eye,
Then descend thyself, and be,
Ishtar, sacred bride to me!

EGYPTIAN FOLK-LORE.

A MOST striking illustration of the contradictions of human character is to be found in the religious worship of the ancient Egyptians. Their state of civilization was highly advanced. Their temples were among the wonders of the world. Their priests were also scholars and scientists. In whose honor were those magnificent sacred edifices constructed? What were the objects of devotion in whose service the lives of learned and notable men were passed? Not the vast creatures of a distorted imagination, nor yet the . fearful and colossal images to which other heathen nations bowed. Living animals-beasts of burden, birds, cats, and hideous reptiles-were the deities of the Nile. A reason for this strange worship of their gods in forms so debasing is found in Ovid (Metamorphoses, v, 319). It is said that giants invaded the heavens, and that the gods fled in fear to Egypt, where they disguised themselves in animal shapes.

After these appeared

A crew, who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,

With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd

Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek

Their wand'ring gods disguis'd in brutish forms,

Rather than human.

-Milton's "Paradise Lost."

Perhaps a better explanation of this singular prostitution of worship is that the animals were used as hieroglyphic symbols in the sacred writings, and from this the symbolism was carried to the living brute. Sometimes the gods were

FOLR-LORE 23

represented as human figures, but with the heads of the respective animals.

Apart from their degrading worship, the religion of the Egyptians was not low in its conceptions or aspirations. The earlier generations seem to have believed in one omnipotent and all-wise Creator; and throughout their history the Egyptians manifested an abiding faith in the immortality of the soul, the punishment of the wicked after death, and the future reward of the righteous. The names applied to their gods are endless, yet the principal divinities themselves were by no means so numerous, since each seems to have had many appellations.

OSIRIS, the principal deity, was generally worshiped under the form of the bull Apis. A living bull in the great temple at Memphis received the highest honors in life and in death. Osiris was also the sun god and the god of the Nile.

ISIS was the consort of Osiris, and is mentioned also as his mother, sister, and daughter. She was represented as a cow, or as a human female figure with horns. She was the moon goddess, and was the patroness of the Nile.

HORUS, or Orus, the son of Osiris and Isis, was a type of the sun, the god of time. Sometimes he is represented as Osiris himself. Osiris, Isis, and Orus are the three best known of all the gods of Egypt, and in their primal or derivative forms constitute most of the mythology.

ᎡᎪ.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,

Marched armies through thy land with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,

When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

-Horace Smith's "Address to a Mummy."

In Egyptian Thebes the chief deity was known as AMUN-
He had a ram's head. PASHT, his sister, had the head

of a cat.

Like Ra, she represented the sun.

The father of Ra and Pasht was, in Memphis, PHтAH, who was known as the first cause, the father of the beginnings.

THOTH was the god of wisdom. His form was that of the ibis. He was the son of AMUN, or NEPHYX.

TYPHON was the Egyptian Satan-the author of evil, the adversary of gods and men. He assumed variously the forms of a pig, a hippopotamus, and an ass.

SERAPIS was originally a personification of the Nile. In later times he was worshiped with great magnificence, as the patron divinity of the country. His splendid temple, the Serapeon, at Alexandria, which had for its sole rival the Capitol at Rome, was destroyed by the Romans under Theodosius.

MEMNON was an African hero of the Trojan war. He seems to have been also a sun god, and he was perhaps a personification of memory as well. His immense statue at Thebes, in Egypt, in some unaccountable way emitted sounds when the rays of the rising sun fell upon it, and was said to sing. The tones were a mournful strain of music, as of the breaking of a harp-string.

Perhaps thou wert a Mason, and forbidden

By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade;
Then say, what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest-if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

-Horace Smith's "Address to a Mummy."

NOTES OF LITERATURE RELATING TO EGYPTIAN FOLK-LORE.

For many centuries the vast literature of ancient Egypt, existing in countless inscriptions upon rocks and in myriads of papyrus rolls, was locked from the human race, for there was no person in the world who could read a word of it.

A key to this forgotten lore was supplied in 1799, when the spade of a French soldier, engaged in the construction of a rampart in the Delta of the Nile, struck a rock upon which was inscribed a duplicate