THE DESERT ROAD

In the sands I lived in a hut of palm,

There was never a garden to see;

There was never a path through the desert calm,

Nor a way through its storms for me.

Tenant was I of a lone domain;

The far pale caravans wound

To the rim of the sky, and vanished again;

My call in the waste was drowned.

The vultures came and hovered and fled;

And once there stole to my door

A white gazelle, but its eyes were dread

With the hurt of the wounds it bore.

It passed in the dusk with a foot of fear,

And the white cold mists rolled in;

And my heart was the heart of a stricken deer,

Of a soul in the snare of sin.

My days they withered like rootless things,

And the sands rolled on, rolled wide;

Like a pelican I, with broken wings,

Like a drifting barque on the tide.

But at last, in the light of a rose-red day,

In the windless glow of the morn,

From over the hills and from far away,

You came-ah, the joy of the morn!

And wherever your footsteps fell there crept

A path — it was fair and wide;

A desert road which no sands have swept,

Where never a hope has died.

I followed you forth, and your beauty held

My heart like an ancient song,

By that desert road to the blossoming plains

I came, and the way was long.

So, I set my course by the light of your eyes;

I care not what fate may send;

On the road I tread shine the love-starred skies,

The road with never an end.