I know that sunshine, through whatever | Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden rift So mused I once within my willow-tent One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest, Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins, bridge Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat; Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, All life washed clean in this high tide of June. DARA. WHEN Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land Was hovered over by those vulture ills That snuff decaying empire from afar, Then, with a nature balanced as a star, Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills. He who had governed fleecy subjects well Made his own village by the selfsame spell Secure and quiet as a guarded fold; Then, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees Under his sway, to neighbor villages Order returned, and faith and justice old. Brimmed the great cup of heaven with Now when it fortuned that a king more sparkling cheer And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles, Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue, Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes wise Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes, He sought on every side men brave and just; And having heard our mountain shepherd's praise, Look once and look no more, with south-How he refilled the mould of elder days, ward curve Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold; From blossom-clouded orchards, far To Dara gave a satrapy in trust. Was found therein. Some blushed and hung the head; Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roof He stood, and "O my lord, behold the proof That I was faithful to my trust," he said. "To govern men, lo all the spell I had! My soul in these rude vestments ever clad Still to the unstained past kept true and leal, Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air, And fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear, Which bend men from their truth and make them reel. |