Alone the princes lightly pranced, as if the pilgrimage enhanced
Their right to weigh upon the world thereafter. So the doom advanced
To dervish cries and jester's japes. Hermit and boor and jackanapes,
I and my ghost-pale master threw a trail of shadows, motley shapes,
Where Rhodopé's wine-purples mix snow with the moonlight. Oh, 'twas gall
Amid the horror of it all that Bulgars thought us lunatics,
Or worse; for ever at our flank a stream, that in my nostrils stank,
Seethed; and amid the best of her the scum of Europe wenched and drank.
At last we halted where Constantinople's grandeur puts to scorn
The villaged west, and challenges the Orient on her Golden Horn.