"I suffered and was silent--some said lazy-- Until the seasons drove us to the plain. The nomads sold me then to a Shirazi. I never met my happiness again, But trod the same old measure back and forward, And passed a friend as seldom as a tree. Oh, heaviness of ever going shoreward, Of bringing all fruition to the sea! "For I have fared from sea to sea like you, sirs, And with your like, not once but many times. Your path acclaims me eldest of its users, It tells my step as I foresee your rhymes. I know by heart a heartache's thousandth chapter As you have read the preface of delight. The silence you shall enter, I have mapped her. O singing caravan, I was To-night "Long ere you dreamed. I dreaming of my lady Became the cargo-bearer we call Self. Two hundredweight of flesh that spouted Sa'di, A restless bag of bones intent on pelf, Have straddled me in turn.... Hashish and spices, Wheat, poisons, satins, brass, and graven stone, I, Tous, have borne all human needs and vices As solemnly as had they been my own. "Moon-faced sultanas blue with kohl a-pillion, Grey ambergris, pink damask-roses' oil, Deep murex purple, beards or lips vermilion As Abu Musa's flaming scarlet soil I have borne--and dung and lacquer. I have flooded Bazaars with poppy-seed and filigree. Men little guess the stuff that I have studied, Or what their vaunted traffic seems to me. "I am hardened to all wonderments and stories-- My ears have borne the hardest of my task-- I have carried pearls from Lingah up to Tauris, And Russian Jews from Lenkoran to Jask. I have watched fat vessels crammed by sweating coolies With all the rubbish that the rich devise, And often I have wondered who the fool is That takes it all, and whom the fool supplies. "Yet ran my thoughts on her, though cedar rafters Were laid on me, or mottled silk and plush, Although the tinkling scales of varied laughters Rode me from Bandar Abbas to Barfrush, Or broken hearts from Astara to Gwetter. All ironies have made their moving house Of me. I smile to think how many a letter Has passed from loved to lover thanks to Tous "The loveless. Think you men alone are lonely, My masters? I have also worshipped one, Have built my days of faith and service only, And while I worshipped all my life was gone. I spent the funds of life in growing older, In heaping fuel on a smothered fire. See how my tale is rounded! On my shoulder I bear the burden of _your_ world's desire.