1
I was sleeping when Namdeo and Vitthal Stepped into my dream.
'Your job is to make poems. Stop wasting time,' Namdeo said.
Vitthal gave me the measure and gently aroused me from a dream inside a dream.
Namdeo vowed to write one billion poems.
'Tuka, all the unwritten ones are your responsibility.'

2
To repeat Your name is to string pearls together.
The pleasure in your manifested form is always new.
I have ceased to desire the unembodied God.
Your worshippers do not seek liberation.

The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

If you wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or harass the foe from the rear,
Storm fort or redoubt, you had only to shout
For Abdul Abulbul Amir.

Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.

One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun

Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, --
Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose.
A miser was he, with a miser's nose,
And eyes like little dollars in the dark.
His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark;
And when he spoke there came like sullen blows
Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,
As if a cur were chary of its bark.

Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,
Year after year he shambled through the town, --
A loveless exile moving with a staff;
And oftentimes there crept into his ears

At four years Nature is mountainous,
Mysterious, and submarine. Even

A city child knows this, hearing the subway's
Rumor underground. Between the grate,

Dropping his penny, he learned out all loss,
The irretrievable cent of fate,

And now this newest of the mysteries,
Confronts his honest and his studious eyes----

His mother much too fat and absentminded,
Gazing past his face, careless of him,

His fume, his charm, his bedtime, and warm milk,
As soon the night will be too dark, the spring

I saw her, Harry, first, in March --
You know the street that leadeth down
By the old bridge's crumbling arch? --
Just where it leaves the dusty town

A lonely house stands grim and dark --
You've seen it? then I need not say
How quaint the place is -- did you mark
An ivied window? Well! one day,

I, chasing some forgotten dream,
And in a poet's idlest mood,
Caught, as I passed, a white hand's gleam --
A shutter opened -- there she stood

Training the ivy to its prop.
Two dark eyes and a brow of snow

I'm sitting by the fire tonight,
The cat purrs on the rug;
The room's abrim with rosy light,
Suavely soft and snug;
And safe and warm from dark and storm
It's cosiness I hug.
II
Then petulant the window pane
Quakes in the tempest moan,
And cries: "Forlornly in the rain
There starkly streams a stone,
Where one so dear who shared your cheer
Now lies alone, alone.
III
Go forth! Go forth into the gale
And pass and hour in prayer;
This night of sorrow do not fail

Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
He couldn't see the man who walked in front;
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing
Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt `Keep to your right -- make way!'
When squeezing past some men from the front-line:
White faces peered, puffing a point of red;

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine --
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.
But, is it sweet to look around, and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserved, at least, as much as you, --
Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less?

And, wherefore should you love your God the more,
Because to you alone his smiles are given;
Because he chose to pass the many o'er,
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?

I THINK to-night I could bear it all,
Even the arrow that cleft the core,—
Could I wait again for your swift footfall,
And your sunny face coming in at the door.
With the old frank look and the gay young smile,
And the ring of the words you used to say;
I could almost deem the pain worth while,
To greet you again in the olden way!
But you stand without in the dark and cold,
And I may not open the long closed door,
Nor call thro’ the night, with the love of old,—
“Come into the warmth, as in nights of yore!”

I think to-night I could bear it all,
   Even the arrow that cleft the core, --
Could I wait again for your swift footfall,
   And your sunny face coming in at the door.
With the old frank look and the gay young smile,
   And the ring of the words you used to say;
I could almost deem the pain worth while,
   To greet you again in the olden way!

But you stand without in the dark and cold,
   And I may not open the long closed door,