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“A caravan from China comes;
For miles it sweetens all the air
With fragrant silks and dreaming gums,
Attar and myrrh --
A caravan from China comes.
O merchant, tell me what you bring,
With music sweet of camel bells;
How long have you been travelling
With these sweet smells?
O merchant, tell me what you bring.
A lovely lady is my freight,
A lock escaped of her long hair, --
That is this perfume delicate
That fills the air --
A lovely lady is my freight.
Her face is from another land,
I think she is no mortal maid, --
Her beauty, like some ghostly hand,
Makes me afraid;
Her face is from another land.
The little moon my cargo is,
About her neck the Pleiades
Clasp hands and sing; Hafiz, 't is this
Perfumes the breeze --
The little moon my cargo is.”
―
For miles it sweetens all the air
With fragrant silks and dreaming gums,
Attar and myrrh --
A caravan from China comes.
O merchant, tell me what you bring,
With music sweet of camel bells;
How long have you been travelling
With these sweet smells?
O merchant, tell me what you bring.
A lovely lady is my freight,
A lock escaped of her long hair, --
That is this perfume delicate
That fills the air --
A lovely lady is my freight.
Her face is from another land,
I think she is no mortal maid, --
Her beauty, like some ghostly hand,
Makes me afraid;
Her face is from another land.
The little moon my cargo is,
About her neck the Pleiades
Clasp hands and sing; Hafiz, 't is this
Perfumes the breeze --
The little moon my cargo is.”
―
“The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges;
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides, narrow lanes, and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves, and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles- how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.”
―
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides, narrow lanes, and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves, and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles- how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.”
―
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature is dumb, science is crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time.”
―
―
“The Origin of Violets
I know, blue modest violets,
Gleaming with dew at morn-
I know the place you come from
And the way that you are born!
When God cut holes in Heaven,
The holes the stars look through,
He let the scraps fall down to earth,-
The little scraps are you.”
―
I know, blue modest violets,
Gleaming with dew at morn-
I know the place you come from
And the way that you are born!
When God cut holes in Heaven,
The holes the stars look through,
He let the scraps fall down to earth,-
The little scraps are you.”
―
“THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a path through the woods
Before they planted the trees:
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ring’d pools
Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods
Because they see so few),
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods …
But there is no road through the woods.”
―
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a path through the woods
Before they planted the trees:
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ring’d pools
Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods
Because they see so few),
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods …
But there is no road through the woods.”
―
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