My Themes

u MOST weary man! — why wreathest thou
Again and yet again," methinks I hear you ask,
"The turban on thy sunburnt brow?
Wilt never vary

Thy tristful task,

But sing, still sing, of sands and seas as now,
Housed in thy willow zumbul on the Dromedary?

"Thy tent has now o'ermany times
Been pitched in treeless places on old Ammon's plains!
"We long to greet in blander climes
The Love and Laughter

Thy soul disdains.

Why wanderest ever thus in prolix rhymes
Through snows and stony wastes, while we come toiling
after?

"Awake! Thou art as one who dreams;
Thy quiver overflows with melancholy sand!
Thou faintest in the noontide beams!
Thy crystal beaker

Of Song is banned!

Filled with the juice of poppies from dull streams
In sleepy Indian dells, it can but make thee weaker!

"O! cast away the deadly draught,
And glance around thee then with an awakened eye!
The waters healthier bards have quaffed
At Europe's Fountains

Still babble by,

Bright now as when the Grecian Summer laughed
And Poesy's first flowers bloomed on Apollo's mountains.

"So many a voice thine era hath,
And thou art deaf to all! O, study Mankind! Probe
The heart. Lay bare its Love and Wrath,
Its Joy and Sorrow!

Not round the globe,

O'er flood and field and dreary desert-path,
But into thine own bosom look, and thence thy marvels
borrow.

"Weep! Let us hear thy tears resound
From the dark iron concave of Life's Cup of Woe!
Weep for the souls of Mankind, bound
In chains of Error!

Our tears will flow

In sympathy with thine when thou hast wound
Our feelings up to the proper pitch of Grief or Terror!

"Unlock the life-gates of the flood

That rushes through thy veins! Like Vultures, we delight
To glut our appetites with blood!
Remorse, Fear, Torment,
The blackening blight

Love smites young hearts withal — these be the food
For us! Without such stimulants our dull souls lie dor-
mant!

"But no long voyagings — oh, no more
Of the weary East or South — no more of the Simoom —
No apples from the Dead Sea shore —
No fierce volcanoes,

All fire and gloom!

Or else, at most, sing basso, we implore,
Of Orient sands, while Europe's flowers monopolise thy
Sopranos /"

Thanks, friends, for this your kind advice!
Would I could follow it — could bide in balmier lands!
But those far arctic tracts of ice,
Those wildernesses

Of wavy sands,

Are the only home I have. They must suffice
For one whose lonely hearth no smiling Peri blesses.

Yet, count me not the more forlorn
JFor my barbarian tastes. Pity me not. Oh, no I
The heart laid waste by Grief or Scorn,
Which inly knoweth
Its own deep woe,

Is the only Desert. There no spring is born
Amid the sands — in that no shady Palm-tree groweth!