Betwixt Two Seas :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Lo! lately waken'd from a wintry sleep,
Deeming myself in mossy English glen,
I hang my head abash'd, afraid to peep
Out at this magic world of turban'd men!

“The vault of heaven beams a brighter blue
Seen thro' strange branches wherein new birds sing,
And unknown blossoms scent the air, and strew
The patch of alien earth wherefrom I spring;

“An exiled colony, behold, we stand,
To brave we know not what in days to come,
E'en tho' our offspring grow to love the land,
And, little recking, learn to deem it home.

100

“Yet, if, altho' remote from English vales,
Some vague impression stirs them to the core,—
If each pale drooping petal further pales
With mystic sense of having bloom'd before;

“If half-remember'd whispers from afar
Reach them in broken murmurs; dreams of dreams;
If things that were blend with the things that are,
In part reveal'd by fitful thrills and gleams;

“The aspen's quiver, or the thrush's lay,
The scent of primroses in hidden dells;
The salt sea breeze upon the breath of May,
The distant chime of Christian village bells;

“And these, the sights and sounds of long ago,
Cause them to quail and falter, or to pine
Beside the marble terrace where they blow
Beneath the mastic trees in trembling line;

101

“Ye turban'd men who tend these garden-beds
And are, to us, what Allah is to you!
Bear with their mood, nor trample on their heads
With turn'd up shoe!”