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How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown !

How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,

When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread;

Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms.
In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!

These have passed over it, or may have passed! Now in this crystal tower

Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,

It counts the passing hour.

SAND OF THE DESERT.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread
Dilates into a column high and vast,
A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun,
Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow run,
Till thought pursues in vain.

The vision vanishes! These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!

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And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions fly,

Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

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