The Garden by the Bridge

The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary,The tigers rend alive their quivering preyIn the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary,Too gorged with living food to fly away.

All night the hungry jackals howl togetherOver the carrion in the river bed,Or seize some small soft thing of fur or featherWhose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.

I hear from yonder Temple in the distanceWhose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,Reiterated with a sad insistenceSobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.

Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,Are consummated in the river bed;Parias steal the rotten railway sleeperTo burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame themGoaded by fierce desire, that flays and stings;Poor beasts, and poorer men. Nay, who shall blame them?Blame the Inherent Cruelty of Things.

The world is horrible and I am lonely,Let me rest here where yellow roses bloomAnd find forgetfulness, remembering onlyYour face beside me in the scented gloom.

Nay, do not shrink! I am not here for passion,I crave no love, only a little rest,Although I would my face lay, lover's fashion,Against the tender coolness of your breast.

I am so weary of the Curse of LivingThe endless, aimless torture, tumult, fears.Surely, if life were any God's free giving,He, seeing His gift, long since went blind with tears.

Seeing us; our fruitless strife, our futile praying,Our luckless Present and our bloodstained Past.Poor players, who make a trick or two in playing,But know that death must win the game at last.

As round the Fowler, red with feathered slaughter,The little joyous lark, unconscious, sings,--As the pink Lotus floats on azure water,Innocent of the mud from whence it springs.

You walk through life, unheeding all the sorrow,The fear and pain set close around your way,Meeting with hopeful eyes each gay to-morrow,Living with joy each hour of glad to-day.

I love to have you thus (nay, dear, lie quiet,How should these reverent fingers wrong your hair?)So calmly careless of the rush and riotThat rages round is seething everywhere.

You do not understand. You think your beautyDoes but inflame my senses to desire,Till all you hold as loyalty and duty,Is shrunk and shrivelled in the ardent fire.

You wrong me, wearied out with thought and grievingAs though the whole world's sorrow eat my heart,I come to gaze upon your face believingIts beauty is as ointment to the smart.

Lie still and let me in my desolationCaress the soft loose hair a moment's span.Since Loveliness is Life's one Consolation,And love the only Lethe left to man.

Ah, give me here beneath the trees in flower,Beside the river where the fireflies pass,One little dusky, all consoling hourLost in the shadow of the long grown grass

Give me, oh you whose arms are soft and slender,Whose eyes are nothing but one long caress,Against your heart, so innocent and tender,A little Love and some Forgetfulness.

Just as the dawn of Love was breakingAcross the weary world of grey,Just as my life once more was wakingAs roses waken late in May,Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making,Stepped in and carried you away.

Memories have I none in keepingOf times I held you near my heart,Of dreams when we were near to weepingThat dawn should bid us rise and part;Never, alas, I saw you sleepingWith soft closed eyes and lips apart,

Breathing my name still through your dreaming.--Ah! had you stayed, such things had been!But Fate, unheeding human scheming,Serenely reckless came between--Fate with her cold eyes hard and gleamingUnseared by all the sorrow seen.

Ah! well-beloved, I never told you,I did not show in speech or song,How at the end I longed to fold youClose in my arms; so fierce and strongThe longing grew to have and hold you,You, and you only, all life long.

They who know nothing call me fickle,Keen to pursue and loth to keep.Ah, could they see these tears that trickleFrom eyes erstwhile too proud to weep.Could see me, prone, beneath the sickle,While pain and sorrow stand and reap!

Unopened scarce, yet overblown, lieThe hopes that rose-like round me grew,The lights are low, and more than lonelyThis life I lead apart from you.Come back, come back! I want you only,And you who loved me never knew.

You loved me, pleaded for compassionOn all the pain I would not share;And I in weary, halting fashionWas loth to listen, long to care;But now, dear God! I faint with passionFor your far eyes and distant hair.

Yes, I am faint with love, and brokenWith sleepless nights and empty days;I want your soft words fiercely spoken,Your tender looks and wayward ways--Want that strange smile that gave me tokenOf many things that no man says.

Cold was I, weary, slow to wakenTill, startled by your ardent eyes,I felt the soul within me shakenAnd long-forgotten senses rise;But in that moment you were taken,And thus we lost our Paradise!

Farewell, we may not now recoverThat golden "Then" misspent, passed by,We shall not meet as loved and loverHere, or hereafter, you and I.My time for loving you is over,Love has no future, but to die.

And thus we part, with no believingIn any chance of future years.We have no idle self-deceiving,No half-consoling hopes and fears;We know the Gods grant no retrievingA wasted chance. Fate knows no tears.