I saw an Eastern God to-day; My comrades laughed; lest I betray My secret thoughts, I mocked him too. His many hands (he had no few, This God of gifts and charity), The marble race, that smiled on me, I mocked, and said, “O God unthroned, Lone exile from the faith you owned, No priest to bring you sacrifice, No censer with its breath of spice, No land to mourn your funeral pyre. O King, whose subjects felt your fire, Now dead, now stone, without a slave, Unfeared, unloved, you have no grave. Poor God, who cannot understand, And what of your fair Eastern land, What dark brows brushed your dusky feet, What warm hearts on your marble beat, With many a prayer unanswered?” My comrades laughed and passed. I said, p. 62“If in those lands you wander still, In spirit, God, and work your will,” I whispered in the marble ear So low—because the walls might hear— The painted lips they smiled at me— “O guard my love, where’er he be.”

p. 62

p. 63A FRIEND IN NEED

p. 63

Who has room for a friend Who has money to spend, And a goblet of gold For your fingers to hold, At the wave of whose hand Leap the salmon to land, Drop the birds of the air, Fall the stag and the hare. Who has room for a friend Who has money to lend? We have room for a friend!

Who has room for a friend Who has nothing to lend, When the goblet of gold Is as far from his hold As the fleet-footed hare, Or the birds of the air. Who has room for a friend Who has nothing to spend? We know not such a friend.

p. 64IN A WOOD

p. 64

Hush, ’tis thy voice! No, but a bird upon the bough Romancing to its mate, but where art thou To bid my heart rejoice?

’Tis thy hand, speak! No, but the branches striking in the wind Let loose a withered leaf that falls behind Blown to my cheek.

Hush, thy footfall! No, ’tis a streamlet hidden in the fern, Thus from dawn to dark I wait, I learn Sorrow is all.

p. 65A VAGRANT HEART

p. 65

O to be a woman! to be left to pique and pine, When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of mine. Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be still? There! the last leaves of the beech-tree go dancing down the hill. 

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