"Instead of every song-bird's note I know the scales a merchant's throat Can compass. I have learned by rote The tricks of Copt and Jew; Can tell if Lur or Afghan brawls, The Armenian way of selling shawls Softly, and how an Arab bawls To rouse the raider's crew, Lest ululating strings of slaves Should take the kennel for their graves.... Raids! I have seen a few, "Or wars, occasion dubs them--waves Of Mongol sultans, Kurdish braves. They--Find me words! the Simûn _raves_-- They worked ... 'tis called their will, Battered me in--behold the dint-- With all their hearts that felt like flint, Besmeared the city with the tint Of sunset on my hill. My leopards stalk my bucks at eve-- I shivered as I heard them heave-- At least they ate their kill. "I followed that.... But men who weave Such flowing robes of make-believe, I think the flood was wept by Eve-- Some sportsman shot the dove-- These puzzled me, for God is good And man His image--not of wood, Thank God!--At last I understood All ... all except their love. I grew so hard that I could trace His hand's chief glory in their race. Perhaps He wore a glove." Then one without made haste to smite The malcontent. It opened. Night Stood on the threshold dressed in white, And myriad-eyed and blind. The ostler murmured: "Some _Afrit_ Or bitter worm has entered it; Nor jamb nor lintel seems to fit. I know its frame of mind." "Air stirs the dust upon the floor," The landlord cried. "Fool! Shut that door Amoaning in the wind." "My glade was deep, a lichened well Of ether, limpid as a bell Buoyed on the manifold ground-swell Whose distance changed attires As sun-stroked plush, a roundelay Of all red-blue and purple grey, And, at each rise and fall of day, Snows dyed like altar fires Licked through those loud green sheaves of copse, Bent hyphens 'twixt the mountain-tops, Mosques of my motley choirs. "And I, who gave them bed and bower For nights enduring but an hour Mid blaring miles of trumpet-flower, Leagues of liana-wreath, I saw the rocks through leaves and lings, Could blink the fangs and feel the wings, Thrill with the elemental things Of life and love and death. The purity of air and brook And song helped me to overlook The rapine underneath. "But you--no! one dream more: an elf, Askip on ochre mountain-shelf, Who once had seen a man himself. I used his wand to gauge The sheen of moths and peacocks' whir, To plumb the jungle-aisles, to stir The drifts of frankincense and myrrh, And amorous lithe shapes that purr.... 'Tis finished. Turn the page To where man cased his bones in fat. His mate moved like a tiger-cat Until he built her cage.