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GILEAD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oh, who will take my hand and let mine eyes have rest
Last Line: The homely scenes we loved take hues of palestine.


And I will bring them into the land of Gilead.

OH, who will take my hand and let mine eyes have rest,
And lead me like a child into the quiet west,
Until beneath my feet I press the short wild grass,
And feel the wind come shorewards down the granite pass;
So, fashioned darkly round the mirror of the mind,
The solemn forms I loved in infancy to find
Bent down to shut me in, in billowy solitude, --
Harsh tor and quaking sedge and devil-haunted wood, --
Behind the thin pink lids I should not dare to raise,
Would gather and console the turmoil of my days?

A grain of balm has lain within my scentless breast
Through all these roaring years of tempest, -- and shall rest,
A single grain, how sweet! then, ah! what perfumes rise,
Where, bathed by sacred dews, the soul's full Gilead lies!

There, with the sands around, and many a mirage faint
To tempt the faded sight of fakir and of saint,
Cool, with their clump of palms, by wells like crystal pure,
The myrrh-trees of the Lord, the dripping boughs endure.

Oh, lead me by the hand, and I with eyelids close
Will hear the wind that sighs, the bubbing stream that flows,
The shrill Arabian sounds of blessed aged men,
And the low cries of weary souls at home again;

Yet never raise my lids, lest all these Eastern things,
These forms of alien garb, these palm-surrounded springs,
Surprise my brain that grew in colder zones of light,
Betray with homeless home my impulse of delight.

But when I think I feel the west wind, not the east,
From drought and chilly blue by soft gray airs released,
I'll bend my hand and touch the country at my feet,
And find the sun-dew there, and moor-ferns coarse and sweet,
And the rough bilberry-leaves, and feel the mountainmoss
Stretch warm along the rock, and cross it, and re-cross.

What we loved first and lost in Nature, yet retain
In memory, prized the most, worn to a single grain,
That scene, though wild and far, and acrid with the sea,
Pilgrim of life, is still Gilead to thee and me;
And there where never yet to break the shadows come
Battalions of the world, with bedlam fife and drum,
There, in the ancient hush, the elfin spirit of sleep
Preserves for child-like hearts a pillow broad and deep,
And in a tender twilight, mystic and divine,
The homely scenes we loved take hues of Palestine.





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