FullReads

Round us the wild creatures, overhead the trees,
Underfoot the moss-tracks–life and love with these!
I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers;
All the long lone summer day, that greenwood life of ours!

Rich-pavilioned, rather–still the world without–
Inside–gold-roofed, silk-walled silence round about!
Queen it thou on purple–I, at watch and ward,
Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, love’s guard!

So, for us no world? Let throngs press thee to me!
Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we!
Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face!
God is soul, souls I and thou; with souls should souls have place.

NOTE

The first interlude in Ferishtah’s Fancies. These interludes are love lyrics which follow the separate Fables and Fancies of the Persian Dervish Ferishtah, and state in terms of the affections the truth embodied in didactic or philosophical fashion in the fables. In the first fable, “The Eagle,” the Dervish observes an eagle feeding some deserted ravens. His first inference is that men will be cared for as the ravens, without effort of their own; later he sees that men should be as eagles and provide for the weak. The Dervish at once seeks the largest sphere of human usefulness with the words

“And since men congregate
In towns, not woods–to Ispahan forthwith!”

The lyric protests against the temptation to self-centered seclusion on the part of those who are entirely satisfied in each other’s love.