AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE I. SOMEWHERE in India, upon a time (Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse), There dwelt tid saints whose privilege sublime It was to sit and watch the world grow worse, Their only care (in that delicious clime) Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother II. One half the time of each was spent in praying The other half in fearfully portraying This system of exchanges-there's no saying But that a river, vext with boils and swellings III. So they two played at wordy battledore And kept a curse forever in the air, Flying this way or that from shore to shore; No other labour did this holy pair, Clothed and supported from the lavish store They toiled not neither did they spin ; their bius IV. Each from his hut rushed six score times a day, With cartridge theologic (so to say), His hovel's foor behind him in a way And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill and strong V. One was a dancing Dervise, a Mohammedan, The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist; One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ramadan, Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws of his Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called Ahmed an With nails six inches long, yet lifted not VI. " Who whirls not round six thousand times an hour Will go,” screamed Ahmed, “to the evil place; May he eat dirt, and may the dog and Giaour Defile the graves of him and all his race; Allah loves faithful souls and gives them power To spin till they are purple in the face; Some folks get you know what, but he that pure is Earns Paradise and ninety thousand louries." VII. “Upon the silver mountain, South by East, Sits Brahma fed upon the sacred bean; He loves those men whose nails are still increased, Who all their lives keep ugly, foul and lean; 'Tis of his grace that not a bird or beast Adorned with claws like mine was ever seen; The suns and stars are Brahma's thoughts divine a VIII. “Thou seem'st to see, indeed!” roared Ahmed back, With a stout sapling in my hand, one whack Thy Brahma-blasphemy is ipecac Of true redemption, thou would'st know that Deity a IX. "And this it is which keeps our earth here going Prepared for such ; to think of Brahma throwing Why, not so much as a smooth lotos blowing Which broods around Brahma, and our earth, 'tis known, X. So they kept up their banning amebean, A youth whose face like an incarnate pæan " If there be gods, then, doubtless this must be onc," Surely, whate'er immortals know, thou knowest, XI. The youth was drifting in a slim canoe But neither of our theologians knew Unknown, or of a vast pearl split in two 'Twas good debate-seed, though, and bore large fruit, a XII. There were no wings upon the stranger's shoulders, And yet he seemed so capable of rising That, had he soared like thistledown, beholders Had thought the circumstance noways surprising; Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders The painter of his boat he lightly threw XIII. The strange youth had a look as if he might Have trod far planets where the atmosphere (Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light, Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here; His hair was that of a cosmopolite Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty) XIV. Both saints began to unfold their tales at once, Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile, That they might seize his ear; fool! knave! and dunce! Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil In a child's fingers ; voluble as duns, In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger XV. In general those who nothing have to say They turn and vary it in every way, Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay, They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it, XVI Our saints had practised for some thirty years ; Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers, Germs of yet new migrations; once by the ears, And blow the pinch of premise-priming off XVII. Each had a theory that the human ear To a huge vacuum (and surely here For cant to be decanted throu zn, a mere All day and night, in sunshine and in shower, XVIII, The present being a peculiar case, Put his spurred hobby through its very pace, flouted, And, with each inch of person and of vesture, XIX. At length, when their breath's end was come about, Holding their heads thrust menacingly out, The stranger smiled and said, “Beyond a doubt United parts of speech, or it had been |