Chapter IX: The Distant Temple

Branch of the henna-tree,
Blown in a temple garden far away
In that unfading East across the sea,
O for one waft of perfume from your spray
To cheer the heart in me!

Flower of the champa white,
Sown by the evening wind where dusky feet
Have worn the temple pavement with their beat,
I would lie down and give my soul to-night
Could I but breathe your sweet!

Note of the temple gong
At sunset clanging through the dusty gold,
Since last I heard your nightly music told
It seems as though the months were ages long
And joy itself grown old.

Heart of the East, my heart,
Laden with your remembrance, may not rest;
The very winds that blow from east to west
From out that far horizon-line, impart
Your whisper, trebly blest.

Sound of the temple drum,
Like distant beating of the march of fate,
Through the long years your voice is never dumb,
Calling, at sundown, from the temple gate
To me, who cannot come.

❦

_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._

Transcriber’s Notes

Possible printer’s errors were generally retained, including odd and inconsistent hyphenations, spellings, and punctuations.

_Italics_, =Bolds=, and +Small Caps+ have been marked as so.

Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of their respective stanza.

Where missing in certain poems, the fleuron ❦ symbol/illustration has been silently added to the end.

These poems have had their individual indentation or stanzas standardized within each poem: The Lost Track, The Soul, New Year’s Eve, With Military Honours.

Quotation marks have been added to the 2nd stanza of Time and Space: ‘How far, my dear, has your hand gone from mine In these long days and months since they have met?’

In the 5th stanza of The Valley of the Kings, the final comma was kept instead of replacing it with a period. The section number of God is Great has been changed to “V.” to match the Table of Contents.