Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/92
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Once with millstones crushed their maize,
Baked them tiles to pave their ways,
Ate from silver, drank from glass—
All is lost in sand, alas!
Baked them tiles to pave their ways,
Ate from silver, drank from glass—
All is lost in sand, alas!
Is it so? Did thousands die
When the buran lifted high
Desert dunes to storm their doors,
Slaying through the streets and floors?
Crept a few at length to light
Through those days the sand made night,
Wild with wind, and beasts that ran
Screaming out of Borasan?
Did they crawl they knew not where,
Wear away from what they were,
Rudely learn to live again,
Rived from trade and art and men?
All they gathered, all they knew,
Did it die as raindrops do,
Leaving only maize and sheep,
Toil and huts of reed and sleep?
Back again where life began
Grope thy people, Borasan?
When the buran lifted high
Desert dunes to storm their doors,
Slaying through the streets and floors?
Crept a few at length to light
Through those days the sand made night,
Wild with wind, and beasts that ran
Screaming out of Borasan?
Did they crawl they knew not where,
Wear away from what they were,
Rudely learn to live again,
Rived from trade and art and men?
All they gathered, all they knew,
Did it die as raindrops do,
Leaving only maize and sheep,
Toil and huts of reed and sleep?
Back again where life began
Grope thy people, Borasan?
The MeasureFrank Ernest Hill
UPPER AIR
High, pale, imperial places of slow cloud
And windless wells of sun-swept silence . . . Sense
Of some aware, half scornful permanence
Past which we flow like water that is loud
A moment 'gainst the granite. Nothing here
Beats to the quick deed that we left below,
That was a flame; this is the soul of snow
Immortalized in moveless atmosphere.
And windless wells of sun-swept silence . . . Sense
Of some aware, half scornful permanence
Past which we flow like water that is loud
A moment 'gainst the granite. Nothing here
Beats to the quick deed that we left below,
That was a flame; this is the soul of snow
Immortalized in moveless atmosphere.
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