University of Virginia Library

If there is any thing that will endure
The eye of God, because it still is pure,
It is the spirit of a little child,
Fresh from his hand, and therefore undefiled.
Nearer the gate of Paradise than we,
Our children breathe its airs, its angels see;
And when they pray God hears their simple prayer,
Yea, even sheathes his sword, in judgment bare.
Witness this story of a by-gone time,
Itself a song, though yet untold in rhyme.

Where stretches Egypt, and its gardens smile,
Won from the desert by the lordly Nile,
Famine and Pestilence went hand in hand
Of old, and ravaged that unhappy land;
For lo, the Nile, wherein its plenty lies,
The fertilizing Nile forgot to rise.
Day after day it lay, a sluggish flood,
And slimy monsters wallowed in its mud.
When spread the news, and ill news fly apace,
A fearful panic seized the Moslem race,
For not alone its native tribes it fed,
But all the East to Egypt looked for bread.
In Cairo first, there most improvident,
Then in the towns, and in the wandering tent,
Under the palms, by many a shrunken well,
Fainting they fell, and perished where they fell.

At first they only starved; but by and by
A dread infection brooded in the sky:
There was no time to starve, with every breath
They drew in death, a tainted, loathsome death.
All business ceased; bazaars and mosques were closed;
Somewhere about his tower the muezzin dozed.
No more the faithful bowed towards the East,
Was kept no more the Bairam's sacred feast:
(The fasts, alas, they could not help but keep!)
The land was shrouded in a deathly sleep.
You might have walked through Cairo, street by street
Nor met a soul,—'twere better not to meet:
The flying thief, the murderer abhorred,
Or plague-struck beggars—such were those abroad.

At length a sheik remembered what was writ,
(Through faith not doubt had he forgotten it),
That “Children are the keys of Paradise.”
Also that “They alone are good and wise,
Because their thoughts, their very lives are prayer.”
He sought the mosque, summoned the people there,
Told them his thought, and made its meaning plain,
That they by childish lips should pray again.
'Twas said, and done: the Emir gave command,
And straight the muezzins sang it through the land.

The hour was fixed at dawn. At last dawn came.
Slowly the sun arose, a globe of flame
Struggling with blood-red clouds: in every street
Was seen a crowd, was heard the tramp of feet:
Around the mosques they gathered with a sigh,
Waiting to know if they should live—or die.
The Imauns crowned the babes with early flowers,
And bore them up the minarets and towers,
Even to their topmost summits, where they stood,
And saw the Pyramids and Nile's black flood,
And Cairo at their feet, a breathless mass,
Dying to hear them pray, and see what came to pass.
It was a beautiful but solemn sight
To mark the trembling children robed in white,
Painted against the red and angry sky,
Stretching their arms to Him who dwells on high.
But there they stood, and there they knelt and prayed,
And from that hour the pestilence was stayed.
For while they prayed there came a rush of wind
That rent the clouds, and showed the sun behind;
They saw its broad, bright light, and seemed to hear
The wave of palms, the flow of waters near.
Yes, it was true: the Nile began to rise,
As if its springs were fed from the benignant skies!
It rose, and rolled, and ran before the breeze,
Its long waves furrowed like the stormy seas,
Its mud was swept away, its monsters sank,
It swayed and snapped the reeds along the bank,
Raging and roaring, rising higher and higher,
Far-flaming in the sun—a sheet of windy fire!
All wept with joy. And now there came a man
Wild with good news; he shouted as he ran,
“There is no God but God. Lo, God is Great.
There stands a row of camels at the gate,
Laden for all with sacks of wheat and grain.”
They fell upon their knees and wept again.
But they, the children, meek and undefiled,
Went through the streets, and smote their hands and smiled.
Nor was there longer plague or famine there,
Thanks be to God, who heard the Children's Prayer!