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النشر الإلكتروني

For the structure that we raise,

Time is with materials filled;

Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these ;

Leave no yawning gaps between ;

Think not, because no man sees,

Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and unseen part;

For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;

Make the house, where Gods may dwell,

Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,

Standing in these walls of Time,

Broken stairways, where the feet

Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base;

And ascending and secure

Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain,

And one boundless reach of sky.

SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR

GLASS.

A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime

Of Arab deserts brought,

Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.

How many weary centuries has it been

About those deserts blown!

How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite

Trampled and passed it o'er,

When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread ;

Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth

Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms

Pacing the Dead Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate

With westward steps depart ;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,

And resolute in heart!

These have passed over it, or may have passed '
Now in this crystal tower
Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,
It counts the passing hour.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand ;-
Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,

Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread

Dilates into a column high and vast,

A form of fear and dread.

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