So little dost thou seem of common earth,
So much of spirit doth thy fabric show,
That we, who watch thee through the azure glow,
Might deem that with the stars thou cam’st to birth.
So sweet and true the voices from thy spire,
Which bless the day’s betrothal unto night,
That when they falter with the fading light,
We well might think an angel touched his lyre.
If chiselled stone and molten bronze instil
Hopes deeper than the fountains of my tears,
And love that hungers for eternity,
God, I believe Thou hast some use for me;
Leave me no life of dumb and sluggard years,
But cut or melt me till I speak Thy will.
IV
TO THE ENGLISH GIPSIES [6]
Rough swarthy Gipsy folk,
Would that my voice could once forget to falter,
And sing a song as free as swallows’ wings
Of ancient Gipsies, and their “dukes” and “kings,”
The men who braved the branding-rod and halter,
Because like birds they nimbly came and went,
And loved the stars and road, and crouching tent
Beneath a grove of oak.
In ages long ago
The Brahman priests pursued you with their curses,
Because you found life sweeter at the core
Without the mumbling of their magic lore.
And you have lived to see their Sanskrit verses
Fall dead; and Brahmans, like mere Romany,
Now tempt their gods by trusting to the sea,
Though trembling while they go.
Then hardened against fear
You looted caravans of gold-shot dresses
And gems upon their way to bright Baghdad,
And drove the Moslem Khalif rampant mad,
When pearls culled from the ocean for the tresses
Of his Circassian, in your pouches fell,
As trifles to adorn the dusky shell
Of some black virgin’s ear.
Next Greece and Thessaly
Became the home of many a jocund roamer,
Who gaily danced, or begged with mien forlorn,
And patched his Indian speech where it was torn
With remnants from Demosthenes and Homer,
Until you struck your blackened tents again
And tattered pageants crossed the endless plain
Of fertile Hungary.
’Tis even said you planned
To trick the Pope with penitential moaning,
And gained his leave to wander seven years
Towards the melancholy North, with tears
The sin of feigned apostasy atoning:
Thus fortified against enquiring foes,
You, with the budding of the Tudor rose,
Alighted on our land.