To His Love Instead Of A Promised Picture-Book

The greater and the lesser ills:         He waved his grey hand wearily         Back to the anger of the sea,     Then forward to the blue of hills.     Out from the shattered barquenteen         The black frieze-coated sailors bore         Their dying despot to the shore     And wove a crazy palanquin.     They found a valley where the rain         Had worn the fern-wood to a paste         And tiny streams came down in haste     To eastward of the mountain chain.     And here was handiwork of Cretes,         And olives grew beside a stone,         And one slim phallos stood alone     Blasphemed at by the paroquets.     Hard by a wall of basalt bars         The night came like a settling bird,         And here he wept and slept and stirred     Faintly beneath the turning stars.     Then like a splash of saffron whey         That spills from out a bogwood bowl         Oozed from the mountain clefts the whole     Rich and reluctant light of day.     And when he neither moved nor spoke         And did not heed the morning call,         They laid him underneath the wall     And wrapped him in a purple cloak.     From the Modern Persian.