But
they were voices and voices only; for they who sang were as unkempt and
forceless as the lonely wall which shut them in from the insistent soul
of the desert.
Desolation? The desert was not desolate. Its face was bare and burning,
it slaked no man's thirst, gave no man food, save where scattered oases
were like the breasts of a vast mother eluding the aching lips of her
parched children; but the soul of the desert was living and inspiring,
beating with vitality. It was life that burned like flame. If the
water-skin was dry and the date-bag empty it smothered and destroyed; but
it was life; and to those who ventured into its embrace, obeying the
conditions of the sharp adventure, it gave what neither sea, nor green
plain, nor high mountain, nor verdant valley could give--a consuming
sense of power, which found its way to the deepest recesses of being. Out
upon the vast sea of sand, where the descending sun was spreading a note
of incandescent colour, there floated the grateful words:
"He remembering His mercy hath holpen His servant Israel; as He
promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed for ever.
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