WALKING UP A HILL AT DAWN
Here is the wind in the morning; The kind red face of G.o.d Is looking over the hill We are climbing.
To-morrow we are going to marry And work and play together, And laugh together at things Which would not amuse our neighbours.
_Song of Kafiristan._
PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE
Your eyes are black like water-melon pips, Your lips are red like the red flesh of water-melons, Your loins are smooth like smooth-rind water-melons.
You are more beautiful than my favourite among mares, Your b.u.t.tocks are sleeker and firmer, Like her your movements are on legs of light steel.
Come and sit at my hearth, and I will celebrate your coming; I will choose from the hundred flocks of each a hundred, Pa.s.sing at the foot of the Himalaya,
The two most silky and most beautiful great sheep.
We will go to the temple and sacrifice one of the two To the G.o.d Pandu, that you may have many children;
And I will kill the other and roast it whole, My most fair rose-tree serving as a spit.
I will ask the prettiest eaters and the prettiest drinkers;
And while they eat and drink greatly for three days, I will wind silver rings upon your arms and feet And hang a chain of river gold about your neck.
_Popular Song of Kafiristan._
_KAZACKS_
YOU DO NOT WANT ME?
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet Tamour-leng was maimed, Going on crippled feet, And he conquered the vast of the world.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
Is it because I am maimed?
Yet I have one arm to fight for you, One arm to crush you to my rough breast, One arm to break men for you.
It was to shield you from the Khargis That I drag this stump in the long days.
It has been so with my women; They would have made you a toy for heat.
After their chief with his axe once swinging Cut my left arm, that, severed, b.l.o.o.d.y, and dead, Yet struggled on the ground trying to guard you, I have had pain for long in my arm that"s lost.
Since the silk nets of your grape-l.u.s.trous eyes Ensnared this heart that did not try to guard, Ever I have a great pain in my heart that"s lost.
You do not want me, Zohrah.
_Kazack poem of the Chief Gahuan-Beyg (1850-1885)._
_KOREA_
TEARS
How can a heart play any more with life, After it has found a woman and known tears?
In vain I shut my windows against the moonlight; I have estranged sleep.
The flower of her face is growing in the shadow Among warm and rustling leaves....
I see the sunlight on her house, I see her curtains of vermilion silk....
Here is the almond-coloured dawn; And there is dew on the petals of my night flower.
_Lyric of Korea._
THE DREAM
I dreamed that I was touching her eyelids, and I awoke To find her sleepy temples of rose jade For one heart-beat....
Though the moonlight beats upon the sea, There is no boat.
_Lyric of Korea._
SEPARATION
As water runs in the river, so runs time; And ever my eyes are wasted of her presence.
The red flowers of the second moon were yesterday; To-day the earth has spots of blood, and there are no flowers.
The wild geese were harnessed to the autumn moon; They have come, I heard their crying, and they are gone.
They have pa.s.sed and given me no message; I only hear the falling, falling noise of white rain.