"No," sighed the poet; "you do me wrong, For sorrow is ever the nest of song." The Shoes of Happiness. Everywhere that he wandered in search he found some touch of unhappiness. He tried Youth and Age, but, "The young were restless that youth should stay, The old were sad that it went away." The Shoes of Happiness. He thought to find the shoes on the feet of the Lover, but heard the Lover say: "Yes, yes; but love is a tower of fears, A joy half torment, a heaven half tears!" The Shoes of Happiness. He had heard of a wise old Sage, who had been to Mecca, and sought him only to hear, "I am not glad; I am only wise." At last he heard of a man from far Algiers. With hurried steps he sought in vain. At last one day he found a man lying in a field: "'Ho,' cried Halil, 'I am seeking one Whose days are all in a brightness run.'-- 'Then I am he, for I have no lands, Nor have any gold to crook my hands. Favor, nor fortune, nor fame have I, And I only ask for a road and a sky-- These, and a pipe of the willow-tree To whisper the music out of me.' "Out into the field the vizier ran. 'Allah-il-Allah! but you are the man; Your shoes then, quick, for the great sultan-- Quick, and all fortunes are yours to choose!' 'Yes, mighty Vizier,... but I have no shoes!'" The Shoes of Happiness. THE HAPPINESS OF LOWLINESS And just as this opening poem teaches the happiness of poverty, so the next, "The Juggler of Touraine," teaches the happiness of lowliness. Poor Barnabas, just a common juggler, when winter came, because he had been spending the summer amusing people, had no place to go, and a sympathetic monk took him into the monastery to live. Barnabas was happy for a time; but after a while, as he saw everybody else worshiping the Beautiful Mother with lute and brush, viol, drum, talent, and prayer, he began to feel that his talents were worthless: "But I, poor Barnabas, nothing can I, But drone in the sun as a drowsy fly." The Shoes of Happiness. Then came a thought that leaped like flame over his being, and an hour later the monks found him, kneeling in the sacred altar place. What he was doing chagrined them. They were shocked just as many people of this day, to see a man worshiping with a different bend of the knee than that to which they had been accustomed. How prone we are to judge those who do not worship just as we have worshiped! This seems such a common human weakness that Alfred Noyes, with a touch of kindly indignation, speaks a word in "The Forest of Wild Thyme" that may be interjected just here in this study of Barnabas the juggler, whom the monks indignantly found worshiping the Virgin by juggling his colored balls in the air, and speaking thus as he juggled: "'Lady,' he cried again, 'look, I entreat: I worship with fingers, and body, and feet!"