“ I wakened, and dawn trembled,
At last, beyond the Eastern hills,
And, star by star, night failed;
And eagerly the sun leapt up the sky,
And, as his flashing rays
Smote kindling towers and flaming gates of brass,
Across the reedy moat
A clattering drawbridge fell,
And wide the glittering portals slowly swung:
And there came streaming out in slow procession
A sleepy caravan of slouching camels,
Groaning and grumbling as they strode along
Beneath their mountainous burdens,
Upon whose swaying summits,
Impassively, the blue-robed merchants sat. ”

“ The dappled panther; the brown-eyed gazelle,
Butting with black horns through the tangled brake
The nimble hare, alert, with pricked-up ears;
The tiger, crouched, with yellow eyes afire;
The shaggy mountain-goat,
Perched on the utmost crag,
Against the afterglow of lucent ruby,
Or, poised with bunching hoofs
In mid-spring over a dark, yawning chasm;
Or the black stallion, with his tameless troop,
Fording a mountain-river in the dawn. ”

“ To await till dawn should open
The city gates for us.
That night we did not sleep,
But, crouched upon the ground,
We watched the moon rise over Babylon,
Till, far behind us, o'er the glittering waste,
Was flung the wall's huge shadow,
And the moving shades of sentries,
Who, unseen above our heads,
Paced through the night incessantly. ”

“ Till dawn shall loose the arrow from the bow.
I, who, with eager, faltering hand have sought
To fashion a little beauty, in the end,
Have looked on the perfect beauty, and I die--
Even as the priest, who, in the heart of night,
Trembling before the thunder-riven shrine,
Looks on the face of God, and perishes.
I die...
And yet, maybe, when earth lies heavily
Upon the time-o'ertoppled towers,
And tumbled walls, and broken gates of brass ”

“ And, at dawn,
I die.
And yet, this morning, as I slowly climbed
The steep, ascending stages
That lead up to the hanging-gardens--
Where, tier on tier,
The great brick arches bore
Their April wealth of blossoms,
Plumed with palm and dusky cypress--
I little knew that I
Who came to carve a garland
Round a fountain's porphry basin,
Should scale so soon the utmost peak of life. ”

“ But gazed, wild-eyed, till dawn upon that face,
Which hovered o'er me, like the moon of dreams;
And seemed to draw the wandering tides of life
In one vast wave, which ever strove
To climb the heavens wherein she moved,
That it might break in triumphing foam about her. ”

“ My soul shall seek out beauty
And look, once more,
Upon the unveiled vision...
And not die.
Night passes: and already in the court,
Amid the plash of fountains,
There sounds the pad of naked feet approaching.
With slow, deliberate pace,
As though they trod out all my perished years,
The Nubians come, to lead me out to death.
Slowly the great door opens;
And clearer comes the call of waters;
Cool airs are on my brow ...
Lo! ... in the East, the dawn. ”

“ And soon our captors stirred:
And we arose, to see
The walls and towers of Babylon, dark
Against the clear rose of the afterglow,
Already in the surge of shadows caught,
As night, beneath us, slowly Westward swept,
Flooding the dreaming plain that lay before us,
Vast, limitless, bewildering,
And strange to mountain-eyes. ”

“ Beneath the cloudy moon...
Six years ago!
Ah! soon--too soon,
Our tale, too, will be told:
And yet, and yet,
From this old Eastern tale we know,
Love's story never can grow old,
Till Love, himself, forget. ”

“ Half-slumbering, with fleeting, fretful dreams
That could not quite forget the chafing cords,
That held our arms in aching numbness:
But, ere the noon, in sounder sleep I sank,
Dreaming I floated on a still, deep pool,
Beneath dark, overhanging branches;
And seemed to feel upon my cheek
The cool caress of waters ”

“ Our captors loosed the thongs that held us,
But left our wrists still bound.
And one with great clay pitchers came,
And over our hot bodies, travel-stained,
Poured out cool, cleansing waters
In a gurgling, crystal stream,
And flung coarse robes of indigo
About our naked shoulders. ”

“ Set thickly round with screens of yew and ilex,
She stood upon the dark, broad brim
Of a wide granite basin, gazing down,
With dreaming eyes, into the glooming cool,
Unraimented, save of the flickering gleam,
Reflected from the lucent waters,
That flowed before her silently:
And slowly, from her feet,
The cold light rippled up her body, till,
Entangled in the meshes of her hair,
It flooded the calm rapture of her face:
When, dreaming still, she lifted up her eyes,
Unseeing ”