Passionate, never-wearied voice,
Tombed in thy brittle shell,
This human heart
Thou croonest age on age,
"Give and ask not,
Help and blame not,"
Heeded less than large and mottled cowry
The which at least some child may hold to ear
All smiles to listen.
Thou findest parables;
With fond imagination
Adorning truth
For the successive
Unpersuaded
Generations.
This boy, myself that was,
Musing visions by that woman raised,
Watched that land she came from, towned with ruins
Send mile-long files of laden camels out
With grain to hostile cities,--
Knew too the blue entrancing plain of waters
Teemed with fresh shoals, buoyed up indifferently,
Fisher--trader--pirate bark,--
Even the straight thought whispered at his ear,
"Thy lips might join with hers as with some cousin's,
Here, now, at noon,
Hugging her bereaved sadness close,
And still, to-night, with equal satisfaction,
Thy mother's blind contentment with her son."
While half-seduced, half-chafed, his mind was shaken
As with conflicting gusts a choppy sea,
His eyes, still greedy of their visions,
Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat,
And to the ebon threshold of each house,
Conjured forth the man that each was planned for:
Great creatures smiling with his father's smile,
Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied,
Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains,
Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold.
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