Page:Poems, Volume 1, Coates, 1916.djvu/104

82 And with unconscious, tireless sacrifice

Creates a paradise.

A paradise you say,

Stretching away—and endlessly away!—

A garden—lovelily abloom

With rice and silk and tea,

Cotton and yam and wheat, all fair to see,

And breathing forth an exquisite perfume

Of mingled mulberry and orange blows,

Azalea and rose:

A garden, yet a tomb

Where myriads, sleeping, are remembered still

By myriads more, who glad their precepts keep,

And honor them in sleep.

What centuries of industries speak here!

What irrigating waters, silver-clear,

Skirting the uplands, rise, tier above tier!

What thronged canals, through the Delta plain extending

Hundreds of miles!

What junks, what bankside villages unending,

What cottages with brown and green roof-tiles!

What fanes! what wildwood temples without cease!

What unperturbed tranquillity! what peace!