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Alfred 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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