Excerpt
Chapter One Parthians, Medes and Elamites SALVETE!
Oh ye, who tread the trodden pathAnd keep the narrow lawIn famished faith that Judgment DayShall blast your sluggard mists awayAnd show what Moses saw!Oh thralls of subdivided time,Hours Measureless I singThat own swift ways to wider scenes,New-plucked from heights where Vision preensA white, unwearied wing!No creed I preach to bend dull thoughtTo see what I shall show,Nor can ye buy with treasured goldThe key to these Hours that unfoldNew tales no teachers know.Ye'll need no leave o' the laws o' man,For Vision's wings are free;The swift Unmeasured Hours are kindAnd ye shall leave all cares behindIf ye will come with me!In vain shall lumps of fashioned stuffImprison you about;In vain let pundits preach the fleshAnd feebling limits that enmeshYour goings in and out,I know the way the zephyrs tookWho brought the breath of spring,I guide to shores of regions blestWhere white, uncaught Ideas nestAnd Thought is strong o' wing!Within the Hours that I unlockAll customed fetters fall;The chains of drudgery release;Set limits fade; horizons ceaseFor you who hear the callNo trumpet note—no roll of drums,But quiet, sure and sweet—The self-same voice that summoned Drake,The whisper for whose siren sakeThey manned the Devon fleet,More lawless than the gray gull's wait,More boundless than the sea,More subtle than the softest wind!
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Oh, ye shall burst the ties that bindIf ye will come with me!
It is written with authority of Tarsus that once it was no mean city, but that is a tale of nineteen centuries ago. The Turko-Italian War had not been fought when Fred Oakes took the fever of the place, although the stage was pretty nearly set for it and most of the leading actors were waiting for their cue. No more history was needed than to grind away forgotten loveliness.
Fred's is the least sweet temper in the universe when the ague grips and shakes him, and he knows history as some men know the Bible—by fathoms; he cursed the place conqueror by conqueror, maligning them for their city's sake, and if Sennacherib, who built the first foundations, and if Anthony and Cleopatra, Philip of Macedon, Timour-i-lang, Mahmoud, Ibrahim and all the rest of them could have come and listened by his bedside they would have heard more personal scandal of themselves than ever their contemporary chroniclers dared reveal.
All this because he insisted on ignoring the history he knew so well, and could not be held from bathing in the River Cydnus. Whatever their indifference to custom, Anthony and Cleopatra knew better than do that. Alexander the Great, on the other hand, flouted tradition and set Fred the example, very nearly dying of the ague for his pains, for those are treacherous, chill waters.
Fred, being a sober man and unlike Alexander of Macedon in several other ways, throws off fever marvelously, but takes it as some persons do religion, very severely for a little while. So we carried him and laid him on a nice white cot in a nice clean room with two beds in it in the American mission, where they dispense more than royal hospitality to utter strangers....