Far away below her the Nile-valley teemed with
life; the antelopes coursed beside their young to feed on the green pasture
fresh from its long overflow; red foxes sported with their cubs on the
tawny sand; the birds taught their infant offspring their own sweet arts of
flight and song on every bough; and even the ostrich, lonely Desert-runner,
heaped her treasure of white eggs in the sand, or guided her callow young
far from the sight and fear of man;--but the Sphinx sat alone.
Mightier and mightier grew the yearning within her, as the full moon
floated upward from the east and cast her dewy dreams over land and
sea. The hour was come; the whole impulse and persistence of her nature
went out in vivid life, and, filling the very stones which the winds had
gathered and piled against her breast, cleft them with its sentient spell,
clothed them with lean flesh and wiry sinews, shaped them after the fashion
of the Desert men, and sent them out alive with intellect and will, but
with hearts of flint, into the wide world,--the Sphinx's children!
With a sigh that shook the shores of Egypt and smote the Sicilian midnight
with sickening vibrations of earthquake, the Sphinx beheld this culmination
of her great desire; in the very hour of fruition, hope fled; and as this
grim certainty sped away from before her, taking with it all her borrowed
life, she dropped that majestic head lower upon her bosom, uplifted it
again for one last look at her offspring, and so stiffened,--once more a
stone.
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