The Little Book of Modern Verse Part 16

O merchant, tell me what you bring, With music sweet of camel bells; How long have you been travelling With these sweet smells?

O merchant, tell me what you bring.

A lovely lady is my freight, A lock escaped of her long hair, -- That is this perfume delicate That fills the air -- A lovely lady is my freight.

Her face is from another land, I think she is no mortal maid, -- Her beauty, like some ghostly hand, Makes me afraid; Her face is from another land.

The little moon my cargo is, About her neck the Pleiades Clasp hands and sing; Hafiz, 't is this Perfumes the breeze -- The little moon my cargo is.

As I came down from Lebanon. [Clinton Scollard]

As I came down from Lebanon, Came winding, wandering slowly down Through mountain pa.s.ses bleak and brown, The cloudless day was well-nigh done.

The city, like an opal set In emerald, showed each minaret Afire with radiant beams of sun, And glistened orange, fig, and lime, Where song-birds made melodious chime, As I came down from Lebanon.

As I came down from Lebanon, Like lava in the dying glow, Through olive orchards far below I saw the murmuring river run; And 'neath the wall upon the sand Swart sheiks from distant Samarcand, With precious spices they had won, Lay long and languidly in wait Till they might pa.s.s the guarded gate, As I came down from Lebanon.

As I came down from Lebanon, I saw strange men from lands afar, In mosque and square and gay bazar, The Magi that the Moslem shun, And grave Effendi from Stamboul, Who sherbet sipped in corners cool; And, from the balconies o'errun With roses, gleamed the eyes of those Who dwell in still seraglios, As I came down from Lebanon.

As I came down from Lebanon, The flaming flower of daytime died, And Night, arrayed as is a bride Of some great king, in garments spun Of purple and the finest gold, Outbloomed in glories manifold, Until the moon, above the dun And darkening desert, void of shade, Shone like a keen Damascus blade, As I came down from Lebanon.

The Only Way. [Louis V. Ledoux]

I

Memphis and Karnak, Luxor, Thebes, the Nile: Of these your letters told; and I who read Saw loom on dim horizons Egypt's dead In march across the desert, mile on mile, A ghostly caravan in slow defile Between the sand and stars; and at their head From unmapped darkness into darkness fled The G.o.ds that Egypt feared a little while.

There black against the night I saw them loom With captive kings and armies in array Remembered only by their sculptured doom, And thought: What Egypt was are we to-day.

Then rose obscure against the rearward gloom The march of Empires yet to pa.s.s away.

II

I looked in vision down the centuries And saw how Athens stood a sunlit while A sovereign city free from greed and guile, The half-embodied dream of Pericles.

Then saw I one of smooth words, swift to please, At laggard virtue mock with shrug and smile; With Cleon's creed rang court and peristyle, Then sank the sun in far Sicilian seas.

From brows ign.o.ble fell the violet crown.

Again the warning sounds; the hosts engage: In Cleon's face we fling our battle gage, We win as foes of Cleon loud renown; But while we think to build the coming age The laurel on our brows is turning brown.

III

We top the poisonous blooms that choke the state, At flower and fruit our flas.h.i.+ng strokes are made, The whetted scythe on stalk and stem is laid, But deeper must we strike to extirpate The rooted evil that within our gate Will sprout again and flourish, branch and blade; For only from within can ill be stayed While Adam's seed is unregenerate.

With zeal redoubled let our strength be strained To cut the rooted causes where they hold, Nor spend our sinews on the fungus mold When all the breeding marshes must be drained.

Be this our aim; and let our youth be trained To honor virtue more than place and gold.

IV

A hundred cities sapped by slow decay, A hundred codes and systems proven vain Lie hea.r.s.ed in sand upon the heaving plain, Memorial ruins mounded, still and gray; And we who plod the barren waste to-day Another code evolving, think to gain Surcease of man's inheritance of pain And mold a state immune from evil's sway.

Not laws; but virtue in the soul we need, The old Socratic justice in the heart, The golden rule become the people's creed When years of training have performed their part For thus alone in home and church and mart Can evil perish and the race be freed.

The Dust Dethroned. [George Sterling]

Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod!

In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers; The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears, And scant and sear the desert gra.s.ses nod Where once the armies of a.s.syria trod, With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; The lichens cling the closer with the years, And seal the eyelids of the weary G.o.d.

Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, The vulture shadows with arrested wings The indecipherable boast of kings, As Arab children hear their mother's cry And leave in mockery their toy -- they leave The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky.

Kinchinjunga. [Cale Young Rice]

(Which is the next highest of mountains)

I

O white Priest of Eternity, around Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies; O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, First-born of Asia whose maternal throes Seem changed now to a million human woes, Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound One sigh of all the mystery in thee found.

II

For in this world too much is overclear, Immortal Ministrant to many lands, From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands Rivers that each libation poured expands.

Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire!

Thy people fathom life and find it dire, Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire To live again, though in Illusion's sphere, Behold concealed as Grief is in a tear.

III

Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites, Though dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls In strange austerity, whose trance appalls, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls.

Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure -- Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no wing of Evil lights.