No pilgrim of them all a wearier soul
Brought ever here, no master of dark arts
A spirit vexed with more discordant parts,
No beggar a scrip barer of all dole;
No son, alas, steps sorer with the darts
Of that rebellious sorrow, his sin’s toll.
I kneel and make an offering of my care
And folly, and hurt reason. Who would not
In this fair city be the fool of prayer?
Who would not kneel, if only for the lot
Of being born again–a soul forgiven,
Clothed in new childhood and the light of Heaven?
I do not love you nor the fraudulent artsBy which men tutor men to ways unkind.Your law is not my law, and yet my mindRemains your debtor. It has learned to seeHow dark a thing the earth would be and blindBut for the light of human charity.I am your debtor thus and for the pangWhich…
It is the thought we shall not meet againNerves me to write and my whole secret tell.For when I speak to you, you only jest,And laughing break the sentence with a kiss,Till my poor love is never quite confessed,Nor know you half its tears and tenderness.When the first darkness and the clouds beganI hid it…
And the telling of it is this:The Emir Abu Zeyd the Helali Salameh was sitting one morning in his tent with the Arabs of the Beni Helal and the Lords of the tribe. And lo, there appeared before them in the desert the figure of one wandering to and fro alone. And this was Ghanimeh….
To spend my life’s last store of industryOn thoughts less vain than Youth’s discordant dream;To endow the world’s grief with some counter–schemeOf logical hope which through all time should lightenThe burden of men’s sorrow and redeemTheir faces’ paleness from the tears that whiten;To take my place in the world’s brotherhoodAs one prepared to suffer all…
I have passed out, as from a funeral,From my dead home, and in the great world’s gazeHenceforth I stand, a pilgrim of new days,On the high road of life. Where I was thrall,See, I am master, being passionless;And, having nothing now, am lord of all.How glorious is the world! Its infinite graceSurprises me–and not as…
Holds nothing secret; and Eternity,Which is a mystery to other men,Has like a woman given him its joy.Time is his conquest. Life, if it should fret.Has paid him tribute. He can bear to die,He who has once been happy! When I setThe world before me and survey its range,Its mean ambitions, its scant fantasies,The shreds…
