The Shoes Of Happiness And Other Poems (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... THE SHOES OF HAPPINESS THE EVENTFUL STORY OF THE SULTAN MAHMOUD AND OF HALIL, THE GRAND VIZIER I It was green of April, it was morn In Istamboul on the Golden Horn, Where down the hill and the crooked shore The cypress sorrows evermore. The white Seraglio's marble piles Gleamed ghostly down the silver miles. There mosque and palace and grove and fort Neighbor in many a glorious court. Three are the portals that shut it in, Hushed and afar from the world's great din; Nine are the nightingale gardens there That hang all night in a moon-white air; Fifty the fountains of silver leap, Whose sound is soft as the listless flow Of streams that forever linger and go Down delicate, dream-far valleys of sleep. At the heart of it all, like a lily's gold, Is a gorgeous chamber, I have been told, Whose walls are lighted by lattice bars, Whose roof is pricked by a thousand stars. This is the room that the great Mahmoud Bolted from Grief and her jangling brood. Slant to the walls were the fifty shields That bragged of the fifty battlefields Where his flag had streamed as a meteor red, And his name hung dark as a thunderhead. Those thirty keys, in their bloody rust, Were the thirty towns he had turned to dust. He had harvested all that pleased his eye-- All but the moon in the evening sky. Lands and ladies and ships and herds, He gathered them in as a flock of birds; And his coffers were heaped by his sword's renown Till no one could hammer the covers down. Marbles from Delos, stones from Thrace, He plundered to build him a pleasureplace. Pillars from Ephesus propped the dome Of the gilded mosque and the hippodrome; Shafts of porphyry Baalbec gave To build the porch of his pampered slave. Glory and pleasure, splendor and power, He gulped them all in his...