L'ENVOI
Unto the Desert and the Desert steed
Farewell! The journey is completed now:
Struck are the tents of Ishmael's wandering breed,
And I unwind the turban from my brow.
The sun has ceased to shine; the palms that bent,
Inebriate with light, have disappeared;
And naught is left me of the Orient
But the tanned bosom and the unshorn beard.
Yet from that life my blood a glow retains,
As the red sunshine in the ruby glows;
These songs are echoes of its fiercer strains,—
Dreams, that recall its passion and repose.
I found, among those Children of the Sun,
The cipher of my nature,—the release
Of baffled powers, which else had never won
That free fulfilment, whose reward is peace.
For not to any race or any clime
Is the completed sphere of life revealed;
He who would make his own that round sublime,
Must pitch his tent on many a distant field.
Upon his home a dawning lustre beams,
But through the world he walks to open day,
Gathering from every land the prismal gleams,
Which, when united, form the perfect ray.
Go, therefore, Songs!—which in the East were born
And drew your nurture—from your sire's control:
Haply to wander through the West forlorn,
Or find a shelter in some Orient soul.
And if the temper of our colder sky
Less warmth of passion and of speech demands,
They are the blossoms of my life,—and I
Have ripened in the suns of many lands.
1854.
