FullReads

* * * * *

Because I sought it far from men,
In deserts and alone,
I found it burning overhead,
The jewel of a Throne.

Because I sought–I sought it so
And spent my days to find–
It blazed one moment ere it left
The blacker night behind.

* * * * *

When a lover hies abroad.
Looking for his love,
Azrael smiling sheathes his sword,
Heaven smiles above.
Earth and sea
His servants be,
And to lesser compass round,
That his love be sooner found.

* * * * *

There was a strife ‘twixt man and maid–
Oh that was at the birth of time!
But what befell ‘twixt man and maid,
Oh that’s beyond the grip of rhyme.
‘Twas, ‘Sweet, I must not bide with you,’
And ‘Love, I cannot bide alone’;
For both were young and both were true,
And both were hard as the nether stone.

* * * * *

There is pleasure in the wet, wet clay,
When the artist’s hand is potting it;
There is pleasure in the wet, wet lay,
When the poet’s pad is blotting it;
There is pleasure in the shine of your picture on the line
At the Royal Acade-my;
But the pleasure felt in these is as chalk to Cheddar cheese
When it comes to a well-made Lie:
To a quite unwreckable Lie,
To a most impeccable Lie!
To a water-tight, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-face Lie!
Not a private hansom Lie,
But a pair-and-brougham Lie,
Not a little-place-at-Tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting
And a ring-fence-deer-park Lie.

* * * * *

We be the Gods of the East–
Older than all–
Masters of Mourning and Feast
How shall we fall?

Will they gape for the husks that ye proffer
Or yearn to your song?
And we–have we nothing to offer
Who ruled them so long–
In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of the conch and the gong?

Over the strife of the schools
Low the day burns–
Back with the kine from the pools
Each one returns
To the life that he knows where the altar-flame glows and the tulsi is trimmed in the urns.