Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922)

Griselda :a society novel in rhymed verse
An idle story with an idle moral!
Why do I tell it, at the risk of quarrel
With nobler themes? The world, alas! is so,
And who would gather truth must bend him low,
Nor fear to soil his knees with graveyard ground,
If haply there some flower of truth be found.
For human nature is an earthy fruit,
Mired at the stem and fleshy at the root,
And thrives with folly's mixon best o'erlaid,
Nor less divinely so, when all is said.
Brave lives are lived, and worthy deeds show more are done
Each virtuous day, 'neath the all-pitying sun;6
But these are not the most, perhaps not even
The surest road to our soul's modern heaven.
The best of us are creatures of God's chance
(Call it His grace), which works deliverance;
The rest mere pendulums 'twixt good and ill,
Like soldiers marking time while standing still. show less

Interesting account, from a pro-Arab standpoint, of the "rebellion" of 1882 which led to English intervention, and the start of a roughly 70-year supremacy over Egypt. Blunt makes little pretense of whose side he's on, and he tends to be harsh on his opponents (for the most part). Unclear how much reliance can be put on his account, but it's still an interesting read.