 | The Burdens of Belief and Other Poems |  |
TO THE SAND GROUSE
The Sand Grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus) inhabits the deserts of Central Asia from the Caspian to the Wall of China. It is a bird of immense powers of flight, ranging for thousands of miles in vast flocks over the great spaces which afford it food and water. In 1863 some strange migratory impulse brought numerous coveys to Western Europe, and to the British Isles. In a more recent year a similar impulse brought them here again in much greater numbers, and they attracted such attention that an Act of Parliament was passed for their protection, in the somewhat hopeless expectation that they might settle permanently in the British Isles. The plumage is very beautiful, closely resembling the colours of the desert. The feet are very peculiar, having only three toes, and these small, and glued together close up to the claws.
Of the Mongolian plains,
To seek through leagues of stranger air
Our western storms and rains?
Where some rare water gleams,
Ye bask among the flowers and seeds
Of oleandered streams.
Your native home to be
In lands that since the raging flood
Have never seen the sea.
Rippling its thousand waves,
Its ships, its freight of living men,
And all its ‘wandering graves’?
Under your ranging flight,
Where the great Oxus rolls her sands
Through quivering fields of light.
Your arrowy course was hurled
To Ganges from the Pamir steppe,—
The roof-tree of the world.
Pattered among the stones,
Have ye e'er heard the ocean roar
Or sing its undertones.
Your pinions to our West?
Why thought ye on our scraps of sand
To find a home or rest?
That changed the world's rude face,
First scattering broadcast the seeds
Of our great Aryan race?
Far down the setting flame,
The mighty fountains whence Aral
And your own Caspian came?
And guide our lines of flight,
To the great deeps which still have left
Some little pools of light.
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