Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/80

 As one reclining in the banquet hall,

Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers,

Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry

Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he,

Staunch in the ethic of an antique school—

Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind—

With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene,

Himself impassive, silent, self-contained:

So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched,

Amid the tortured and the torturers.

He who had seen his hopes made desolate,

His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him,

And watched while Pestilence and Famine piled

His stricken people in their reeking doors,

Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown arms

Stretched up to greet him in one last farewell

As back and forth he paced along the streets

With words of hopeless comfort—what was this

That one should weaken now? He weakened not.

Whate'er was in his heart, he neither dealt

In pity nor in scorn, but, turning round,

Met that racked visage with his own unmoved,

Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes,

And while the pangs smote sharper, in a voice,

As who would speak not all in gentleness

Nor all disdain, said: "Yes! And am I then

Upon a bed of roses?"

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