He circled round the minaret. He cried to the Nile. He cried to the
Colossi sitting in their plain, and to the yellow precipices of the
mountains of Libya. He cried to Egypt:

"Come to prayer! Come to prayer! There is no god but God. There is no
god but God."

The days of the gods were dead, and their ruined temple echoed with the
proclamation of the one god of the Moslem world. "Come to prayer! Come
to prayer!" The sun began to sink.

"Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me."

The voice of the muezzin died away. There was a silence; and then, as if
in answer to the cry from the minaret, I heard the chime of the angelus
bell from the Catholic church of Luxor.

"Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark."

I sat very still. The light was fading; all the yellow was fading, too,
from the columns and the temple walls. I stayed till it was dark; and
with the dark the old gods seemed to resume their interrupted sway. And
surely they, too, called to prayer. For do not these ruins of old Egypt,
like the muezzin upon the minaret, like the angelus bell in the church
tower, call one to prayer in the night? So wonderful are they under
stars and moon that they stir the fleshly and the worldly desires that
lie like drifted leaves about the reverence and the aspiration that are
the hidden core of the heart. And it is released from its burden; and it
awakes and prays.