XI.
With me
along the strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the
desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultan is
forgot --
And Peace is Mahmud on his Golden Throne!
XII.
A Book
of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of
Bread, -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise now!
XIII.
Some
for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the
Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the
Promise go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
XIV.
Were it
not Folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life
away to win --
What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!
XV.
Look to
the Rose that blows about us -- "Lo,
Laughing," she says,
"into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my
Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
XVI.
The
Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes -- or it
prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two -- is gone.
XVII.
And
those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it
to the Winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are
turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
XVIII.
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Doorways are
alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his
Pomp
Abode his Hour or two and went his way.
XIX.
They
say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd
gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter -- the
Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
XX.
I
sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where
some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden
wears
Dropped in its Lap from some once lovely Head.
XXI.
And
this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's
Lip on which we lean --
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who
knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!