Some, seeking the highest type of noble men,
Compare their heroes with the cavaliers,
Boasting their ancestry through tangled lines;
But I, who care not for patrician blood,
Hold him the highest who constrains great ends,
Or rounds a prudent life with noble deeds.
DEMETRIUS.
I.
THE SUCCESS OF THE BEGGAR.
In my life I have had two idols, one my country, one my wife,
And I know I loved them faithfully, and both with one accord;
But the day came, beaded falsely on my brittle leash of life,
When perforce I chose between them, through the wisdom of the Lord.
High upon the rocky summit of a cliff in red Algiers,
Raised against the sky of sunset, like a beaker filled with wine,
While each dome is like a bubble that above the brim appears,
Stands the city I was born in, my belovèd Constantine.
Nobly rise the brick-roofed houses with their heavy gray stone walls,
While here and there, above them all, the mosque and minaret;
Like the voice of some enchanter sounds the bearded muezzin's calls,
And the rustle of the cypress seems a murmur of regret.
Round the ancient Cintran city runs a dark wall broad and strong,
Like the mailed belt of a warrior, and the gate the buckle seems;
While a tower toward the sunset is a dagger hilted long;
Whose blade is bid in foldings of a circling sash of streams.
Far away the Atlas mountains rear their heads of lasting snow,
And seem like old men grouped around in high-backed chairs of space;
And they bathe their feet like children in the brooks that run below,
Or smoke their pipes in silence till the clouds obscure each face.
I was poor: they say they found me lying naked in the street,
And a beggar so befriended me and brought me to his door,
And cared for me and tended me, until my growing feet
Could patter through the market-place and there increase our store.