A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems | Page 4

is on you....
Your ways are not ours."
The Roof of the World.
"Ere the first blush of morning's rose
Had reddened the eternal snows,

I plunged the pines among,
And came down thro' the forest sons

In their deep-ranked battalions
With practised steps and strong.
"Then heard I from the plateau rock
A lowing cow and a crowing
cock--
Thin sounds in upper air.
And far below at the valley's end

I saw the morning smoke ascend
That showed me men were there.
"Ho! you lads, arouse, arouse!
He is descended to your house
Of
whom wild legend ran.
On the roof of the world I dwelt five year,

Go, tell your master I am here
To be his serving-man.
"Ho! all you folk, I climbed above
The boundaries of hate and love.

Ho! such an one was I--
The wind it whistled to my bone.
I was
alone, alone, alone
With the mountains and the sky.
"It is a timeless land and still;
The heavens slowly like a wheel

Revolve themselves around;
There are two rulers in that place;

Eternity sits throned by space;
Their law is without sound.
"Ho! you folk, such feats I did
On the world's roof the snow amid,

Ho! such an one as I--
I matched the wild goat in my race,
And
underneath the long wise face
I pulled the beard awry.

"Five years I sported undismayed,
But suddenly I was afraid,
Yea,
fearfully amazed.
I saw the eye of a dying hare;
Infinity was
mirrored there
Ere it was wholly glazed.
"And this shall be my daily good,
To draw your water, hew your
wood,
And lighten all your need;
To do your sowing and your
tilling;
But to be bright and always willing,
And have no other
creed."
All bronzed and bearded was his face;
He had a rapture and a grace

From living in the wild;
As he stared around and strangely spoke

He lookèd not like other folk,
But as an eager child.
The Poet and the Lily.
A poet was born in a modern time,
'Neath Saturn and his Rings,
He
was a child of the world's prime,
Knew all beautiful things.
He was
a child of morning and mirth,
Laughing for joy of the sun,
His
nostrils drank the scent of earth
When rain is over and done.
A lily came from the winter's womb
And grew in its own sweet pride,

But the ruthless steel passed over its bloom,
And low in the dust it
died.
And the poet's heart was filled with pain
That a delicate thing
and rare
Should be reft of the beauty of which it was fain
And
killed by the cruel share.
So he sang of the meadows white with lambs,
And life all young
again,
Of the colts which gallop to their dams,
Knowing not any
rein.
He sang of the spring upon the sea,
Hedges all white with may,

The year in its sweet infancy,
This our great world at play.
Of shepherds piping to their flocks
Across the fields of thyme,
Of
sunlit fields above the rocks,
Where the small waves lap in rhyme.

Of glancing maids and youths their peers,
For ever young and free,

With faces fair, and in their ears
Great music of the sea.

He sang the amber moon a-sail
In an even of misty blue,
The stars
which burn, the stars which pale,
The might which holds them true;

The comets in another sky
Which sweep to an unknown morn.
He
sang of some vast agony
Or ever a world was born.
He sang a song like a twanging bow,
His head was full of sound
As
a dark night when winds are low
And a swell comes from the ground.

He sang a song like a joyous bird
In wooded places and hilly,

While in the hearts of those that heard
Pity grew like a lily.
The Tramp.
Forth from the ill-lit tavern door
Where he had snoozed and boozed
before
Stumbled his shambling feet.
A candle gave a guttering light,

And some one growled a hoarse good-night....
The Tramp was in
the street.
His boots were blistered, burst and patched,
He had a mildewed hat,
which matched
His green, unlovely coat.
Once, too, he caught his
foot and swore,
And, tho' the night was warm, he wore
A muffler at
his throat.
And as he went his two lips moved
As if he muttered songs he loved

To an old, unquiet tune;
And as he went his eyes were glazed,

Twice, too, he paused like some one dazed
And hiccoughed at the
moon.
Thus thro' the empty ways he passed
Until he reached the road at last

With fields at either hand,
And in the heavens bare and bright

The moon stood high and shed her light
Upon the silent land.
And lo! hard by, a lofty rick,
No chance was there of stab or prick,

It makes a pleasant bed.
And so, within, he burrowed deep,
And
then upon a fragrant heap
He laid his unclean head.

The moon was swallowed by a cloud,
A nightingale sang sweet and
loud
From the middle of a wood;
From its small body swelled a
strain
Which flooded all the listening plain.
It trembled as it stood.
Upon his hay the Tramp awoke,
The golden fountain never broke,

The lovely sobbing strain.
The melody of that brown bird
Awoke a
delicate, prisoned chord
Within his sodden brain.
The brain of him who lived remote
And dreamed strange things he