Syria's wealth is of the past and the future.

"Now upon Syria's land of roses Softly the light of eve reposes, And like a glory, the broad sun Hangs over sainted Lebanon: Whose head in wintry grandeur towers, And whitens with eternal sleet, While summer, in a vale of flowers, Is sleeping rosy at his feet.

Shouting aloud, 'Behold what now remains Of the proud conqueror of Syria's plains, Who bow'd the Persian, made the Christian feel The deadly sharpness of the Moslem steel; But of his conquests, riches, honours, might, Naught sleeps with him in death's unbroken night, Save this poor robe.'

Shut in by the sea on the west and the desert on the east, Syria's natural line of expansion was north and south.