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Alfred Noyes - Apes And IvoryAlfred Noyes - Apes And Ivory
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Apes and ivory, skulls and roses, in junks of old Hong-Kong,     Gliding over a sea of dreams to a haunted shore of song,     Masts of gold and sails of satin, shimmering out of the East,     O, Love has little need of you now to make his heart a feast.     Or is it an elephant, white as milk and bearing a severed head     That tatters his broad soft wrinkled flank in tawdry patches of red,     With a negro giant to walk beside and a temple dome above,     Where ruby and emerald shatter the sun,--is it these that should please my love?     Or is it a palace of pomegranates, where ivory-limbed young slaves     Lure a luxury out of the noon in the swooning fountain`s waves;     Or couch like cats and sun themselves on the warm white marble brink?     O, Love has little to ask of these, this day in May, I think.     Is it Lebanon cedars or purple fruits of the honeyed southron air,     Spikenard, saffron, roses of Sharon, cinnamon, calamus, myrrh,     A bed of spices, a fountain of waters, or the wild white wings of a dove,     Now, when the winter is over and gone, is it these that should please my love?     The leaves outburst on the hazel-bough and the hawthorn`s heaped wi` flower,     And God has bidden the crisp clouds build my love a lordlier tower,     Taller than Lebanon, whiter than snow, in the fresh blue skies above;     And the wild rose wakes in the winding lanes of the radiant land I love.     Apes and ivory, skulls and roses, in junks of old Hong-Kong,     Gliding over a sea of dreams to a haunted shore of song,     Masts of gold and sails of satin, shimmering out of the East,     O, Love has little need of you now to make his heart a feast.
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