A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems | Page 5

never wrote
But hoarded in his mind.
He would not kill the dreams
he loved
For sake of little things that moved
The passions of
mankind.
Let the red torches toss and flare,
And all the long-stemmed trumpets
blare,
Let brass beat loud on brass.
Let the Kings ride in victory,

Low comes the thought amidst the cry,
"These visions shall but pass."
For, like reflections in a mirror,
Or empty bubbles on a river,
The
striving world passed by.
What seemed to others worth the winning

Thro' strong desire or hate of sinning
Brought him no energy.
The thunder muttering on the hills,
The song of birds, the babbling
rills,
The painted flowers and stars,
This pageantry of earth did
seem
The parcel of a timeless dream.
He lived beyond the bars.
It was to him a vague mirage
Or memory of a storied page
With
only that appeal;
But oftentimes a sound or sight
Would bring to
him his own delight
More subtle than the real.
And with his sense of entity
Half lost, he raised a vacant eye
Into
the empyrean.
And as he lay upon his back
The pealing centuries
rolled back....

He saw the blue Ægean.
And thus he dreamt: "My palace home
With minaret and marble
dome
Upon the sapphire strait.
My garden full of nightingales,


One singing as the other fails
While evening groweth late.
"And from my watch-tower I behold
Beneath a sky of molten gold

My argosies return.
A homeward wind is in their sails,
Freighted
are they with costly bales,
Vast fires behind them burn.
"I have a room with shining floors
And lofty roof and polished doors,

Wherein I love to dine
With two good friends at left and right,

Whose converse is my soul's delight
And glads my heart like wine.
"Or in my marble portico
We sit and watch the summer glow
And
talk of love and death;
And when the amber twilight fails
We listen
to the nightingales,
And evening holds her breath.
"Oh! Charicles and Charmides,
Much have I dreamt of hours like
these,
My friends I never knew--
Whose voices and whose grave,
sweet words
Were lovelier than the songs of birds,
And fresher than
the dew.
"For Charicles has love and youth,
And all his words are sweet with
truth,
Like a garden with the rain;
And Charmides is mild and wise,

But with his tear-washed, violet eyes
Yet can he smile again.
"Perhaps I knew you, ancient lords
Of nobler wit and finer chords--

But this I cannot tell;
For ever lovely things I sought
In some
strange borderland of thought,
Content therein to dwell.
"For who could blame or who could praise
If one should choose to
pass his days
In a phantasy of dreams,
And, finding thus his own
ideal
In things dissevered from the real,
Be happier than he seems?
"Ah! who could praise or who could blame,
Tho' glimmers all my
way the same,
Like a dyke-road thro' a fen.
Far on, far on--a ruddy
spark--
The toll-light glows adown the dark,

And I, like other men,

"Must pay my toll and pass beyond,--
I made no vow, I signed no
bond,
Nor lose my self-esteem,
But pass, unknown, unloved, unlost,

The man who knew and weighed the cost,
The man who dared to
dream.
"For what is Fame and what's a Name,
Your cries of sorrow, wrath,
and shame,
Your Hamlets and King Lears,
The night must cover
them again
Did they last a thousand lives of men,
A thousand
thousand years.
"The world may say that I have missed;
Ah! no--I am an egoist
Of
subtle, fixed design.
My dreams a garden are to me
To which no
other holds the key,
I wish to keep them mine.
"All mine--those tender, half-thought things,
Which flutter gossamer
rainbow wings
And hover near, near, near.
Why should I catch and
pin them down
And lose their beauty for a crown
Would chafe my
brows to wear.
"And thus, a baser alchemist
In some perverted plan persist
To turn
my gold to dross.
If I turned my gold their soul were sold
Tho' I
wore a crown and cloth of gold,
Their soul were then the loss.
"If I sat high, a crownèd king,
With lofty brows in a royal ring,
A
lustrous diadem,
If I wore the titles 'High, Strong, and Wise,'
And
garments stained with purple dyes,
All jewelled at the hem
"With emeralds, rubies and jacinth stones,
Such as great kings wear
on their golden thrones,
And a royal mantle of vair,
And held a
sceptre in my hand,
Which showed me ruler of all the land,
In my
palace, where none might dare
"To cross my word, but all must bow
As the courtly throng are
bending now,
And give the King his meed,

And slaves waved
forests of peacock fans
And a cry went up like a single man's,
'This

is the King indeed.'
"For I could be King and Overlord
In the wondrous realm of the
written word,
Am King there ... in my dreams.
So, loving dreams,
this life I choose--
The tramp's with tattered coat and shoes,
Yet
happier than it seems.
"Thus, oh! my dreams, you grow not old,
No process dims you,
leaves you cold,
Immortal, bright, you come,
And if you come not,
I am wise,
I have my trusted old allies,
Tobacco, beer, and rum."
His chin sank down upon his breast,
And suddenly the brown bird
ceased
To pour her strain abroad.
A sound less