The Push Cart
Colors like cries of delight from the lips of a child
Leapt from a cart by the curb of a corner I passed.
The oars of a golden galley dipped swirling through seas
Of azure and opal. The ancient Hesperides
Lifted for landfall, and loud with the heroes I laughed!
Blinded by blue we staggered ashore on a strand
Of golden sand to the gorgeous gardens their gate,
Where beautiful birds trilled embowered — but bright in midsward,
Burnished of scale and claw, crouched Ladon, to guard
The Fruit and the footing of maidens that minstreled its fate.
And, dispersing this dream, still another, — bright Bagdad's bazaars
With the slow-footed camels from Yemen that languidly glide,
And, in turban and caftan, some retinue of the viziers,
Black eunuchs with cimeters, guards with their glimmering spears
Round the litters of houris close-veiled to the harem who ride
Where some banquet is spread to bedazzle the eyes of a djinn,
Where the hues of piled peaches, of apricots, pomegranates, plums
And oranges, flicker like heaps of such jewels as blazed
From Sinbad's deep Valley of Diamonds, turning him crazed!
Giant blacks draw the curtains apart — and the great Caliph comes!
Old proser in charge of your push cart, — ye gods, if you knew
The grandeurs of purple and gold and rich crimson you sell
" Two for five — three for five, " with a grin and a greasy swart hand,
As you chatter and shrug with the boy of the boot-blacking stand, —
Why, your button-black eyes would grow bulging! ... Perhaps 'tis as well!
You'd be sure to go treading on clouds till, like him on the Field
Of Mars, that a cloud took and rapt from the sight of his age,
You were snatched to Olympus, and, mopping your oily brown brow,
Wheeled your cart up the heights where the White Oves abide even now, —
Till, at sight of you, gaily they sped Ganymede as a page
And haled you before them! Ambrosia and nectar forgot
I can see them uprisen as one all to pillage your trove.
Now, superb o'er your overturned cart (having feasted their fill)
They are pelting each other with splendors adown the green hill,
They are chairing you up to a seat between Juno and Jove!
Leapt from a cart by the curb of a corner I passed.
The oars of a golden galley dipped swirling through seas
Of azure and opal. The ancient Hesperides
Lifted for landfall, and loud with the heroes I laughed!
Blinded by blue we staggered ashore on a strand
Of golden sand to the gorgeous gardens their gate,
Where beautiful birds trilled embowered — but bright in midsward,
Burnished of scale and claw, crouched Ladon, to guard
The Fruit and the footing of maidens that minstreled its fate.
And, dispersing this dream, still another, — bright Bagdad's bazaars
With the slow-footed camels from Yemen that languidly glide,
And, in turban and caftan, some retinue of the viziers,
Black eunuchs with cimeters, guards with their glimmering spears
Round the litters of houris close-veiled to the harem who ride
Where some banquet is spread to bedazzle the eyes of a djinn,
Where the hues of piled peaches, of apricots, pomegranates, plums
And oranges, flicker like heaps of such jewels as blazed
From Sinbad's deep Valley of Diamonds, turning him crazed!
Giant blacks draw the curtains apart — and the great Caliph comes!
Old proser in charge of your push cart, — ye gods, if you knew
The grandeurs of purple and gold and rich crimson you sell
" Two for five — three for five, " with a grin and a greasy swart hand,
As you chatter and shrug with the boy of the boot-blacking stand, —
Why, your button-black eyes would grow bulging! ... Perhaps 'tis as well!
You'd be sure to go treading on clouds till, like him on the Field
Of Mars, that a cloud took and rapt from the sight of his age,
You were snatched to Olympus, and, mopping your oily brown brow,
Wheeled your cart up the heights where the White Oves abide even now, —
Till, at sight of you, gaily they sped Ganymede as a page
And haled you before them! Ambrosia and nectar forgot
I can see them uprisen as one all to pillage your trove.
Now, superb o'er your overturned cart (having feasted their fill)
They are pelting each other with splendors adown the green hill,
They are chairing you up to a seat between Juno and Jove!
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