PALE pearls Are best for girls, And queenly diamond stones Their charming chaperons Do most befit; But this fierce ruby, heart's blood of the East, What does it want, I ask you, west of Suez? Down the dim centuries of fight and feast It's blazed (no doubt) on many a Rajah-roué's Kingly and costly kit; Balefully still it blinks of hate and harm, An asp upon my Amy's rose-white arm! What tales Of long jezails, And grim zenana-bars, And cruel scimitars Could it portray! Torture, intrigue it knows, and cut-and-thrust Of companies, bow-string and poisoned potion, And elephants soft-padding through the dust, And years and years of killing and commotion. What, Amy, did you say? "Talk about something that I understand"? Why, quite. A Capetown garnet, is it? Oh, all right! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH by WILLIAM JOHNSON CORY CINQUAIN: THE WARNING by ADELAIDE CRAPSEY A SUN-DAY HYMN [OR LAMENT] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES DEATH THE LEVELLER, FR. THE CONTENTION OF AJAX AND ULYSSES by JAMES SHIRLEY IN THE WHITE LAND by KONSTANTIN DMITRIYEVICH BALMONT DAWN MAGIC by CHARLOTTE LOUISE BERTLESEN NATALIA'S RESURRECTION: 5 by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT WRITTEN TO GAALDINE PRISON CAVES TO A.G.A. by EMILY JANE BRONTE |