A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems | Page 2

p. 80.
Love's Defiance: p. 85.
The Playmates: p. 87.
Dramas.
June and November: p. 91.
A Foolish Tragedy: p. 92.
Alone: p. 94.
The Wraith: p. 101.
The Two Murderers: p. 102.
Reflections.
The Wind and the Hills: p. 107.
The Happy Ones: p. 110.
A Question: p. 112.
The Earth: p. 113.
Aspirations: p. 114.
Romance: p. 115.
_Of the poems in this volume "Adeimantus" and "The Hermit and the Faun" first appeared in_ THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, _and "The Song of Snorro" in_ THE SPECTATOR. _They are republished here by kind permission of the Editors._
FANTASIES.
Altruism: A Legend of Old Persia.
In the flowery land of Persia?Long ago, as poets tell,?Where three rivers met together?Did a happy people dwell.?Never did these happy people?Suffer sickness, plague, or dearth,?Living in a golden climate?In the fairest place on earth,?Living thus thro' endless summers?And half-summers hardly colder,?Growing, tho' they hardly guessed it,?Very gradually older.
I can very well imagine?These old Persian lords and ladies?Sitting in their pleasant gardens,?Dreaming, dozing, where the shade is;?Almond trees a mass of blossom,?Roses, roses, red as wine,?With the helmets of the tulips?Flaming in a martial line,?While beside a marble basin,?With a fountain gushing forth,?Stands a red-legged crane, alighted?From the deserts of the North.
So they lived these ancient people,?With the happy harmless faces,?Dreaming till the purple twilight?In their flowery garden-places,?Finding every year the sunshine?And the wind a little colder,?Growing, tho' they hardly guessed it,?Very gradually older,?Till at last they grew so frail?That to their gardens they were carried,?Very feeble and exhausted,?Weak as babes--But still they tarried,
Lying till the purple twilight?Wrapped in wool but hardly warm,?Wearing shawls of costliest texture?Lest the wind might do them harm,?Feeling very faint sensations?Of delight in each old breast,?Twittering with tiny voices?Like young swallows in a nest.?Then the young men spoke together?As they feasted in the taverns,?"It is time to take our Fathers,?We must bear them to the Caverns."
In a mountain were the Caverns,?Fourteen leagues across the sand,?Fourteen leagues across the desert?In a naked golden land.?Black and bold and bare the mountain?Modelled into many shapes,?Cones and pyramids and pillars,?Beetling cliffs and jutting capes.?And within it were the Caverns?Tunnelled into every part,?Some by ancient Persian devils,?Others by a modern art.
Where the terraced lawns lay dreaming,?Underneath a cedar-tree?Dozed an ancient, ancient person?Tiny as a child of three.?Every day a gobbling negro?To his place the old man carried;?Very feeble and exhausted?Did he seem--but still he tarried.?Then Hasan, the