I SAW an Eastern God to-day; My comrades laughed; lest I betray My secret thoughts, I mocked him too. His many hands (he had no few, This God of gifts and charity), The marble face, that smiled on me, I mocked, and said, "O God unthroned, Lone exile from the faith you owned, No priest to bring you sacrifice, No censer with its breath of spice, No land to mourn your funeral pyre; O King, whose subjects felt your fire, Now dead, now stone, without a slave, Unfeared, unloved, you have no grave. Poor God, who cannot understand! And what of your fair Eastern land, What dark brows brushed your dusky feet, What warm hearts on your marble beat, With many a prayer unanswered?" My comrades laughed and passed. I said, "If in those lands you wander still, In spirit, God, and work your will," I whispered in the marble ear So low—because the walls might hear— The painted lips they smiled at me— "O guard my love, where'er he be." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT SAGAMORE HILL by EDGAR LEE MASTERS DANTE by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT AN EPITAPH by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE TO ALFRED TENNYSON by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR EPITAPH INTENDED FOR SIR ISAAC NEWTON, IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY by ALEXANDER POPE HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY: 8. BRENNBAUM by EZRA POUND |