Demetrius
I The Success of the Beggar
In my life I have had two idols, one my country, one my wife,
And I know I loved them faithfully, and both with one accord;
But the day came, beaded falsely on my brittle leash of life,
When perforce I chose between them, through the wisdom of the Lord.
High upon the rocky summit of a cliff in red Algiers,
Raised against the sky of sunset, like a beaker filled with wine,
While each dome is like a bubble that above the brim appears,
Stands the city I was born in, my belovèd Constantine.
Nobly rise the brick-roofed houses with their heavy gray stone walls,
While here and there, above them all, the mosque and minaret;
Like the voice of some enchanter sounds the bearded muezzin’s calls,
And the rustle of the cypress seems a murmur of regret.
Round the ancient Cintran city runs a dark wall broad and strong,
Like the mailed belt of a warrior, and the gate the buckle seems;
While a tower toward the sunset is a dagger hilted long;
Whose blade is bid in foldings of a circling sash of streams.
Far away the Atlas mountains rear their heads of lasting snow,
And seem like old men grouped around in high-backed chairs of space;
And they bathe their feet like children in the brooks that run below,
Or smoke their pipes in silence till the clouds obscure each face.
I was poor: they say they found me lying naked in the street,
And a beggar so befriended me and brought me to his door,
And cared for me and tended me, until my growing feet
Could patter through the market-place and there increase our store.
I never knew the tenderness of father or of mother;
My tatters scarcely covered me; my hunger made me thin;
I never knew of sympathy or kindness from another;
I drank the cup of bitterness that comes to want and sin.
All my early youth was squandered, when there came across my thought
A passionate intolerance of the course my life had run;
And I went out to the venders and some meagre fruitage bought,
Till with selling and with buying, lo, a new life was begun.
Soon I found myself the owner of vast houses, wares, and sails,
A very prince of traffic, with my slaves beyond the line,
Where they sold my costly merchandise of cloth and cotton bales,
Of many colored leathers, ostrich feathers, dates, and wine.