That comfort the market-place,

Or sap the power of Kings,

The Fifth Great River had birth,
Even as it was foretold

The Secret River of Gold!

And Israel laid down

His sceptre and his crown,

To brood on that River bank,
Where the waters flashed and sank,

And burrowed in earth and fell,
And bided a season below,

For reason that none might know,
Save only Israel.

He is Lord of the Last

The Fifth, most wonderful, Flood.
He hears Her thunder past

And Her Song is in his blood.
He can foresay: "She will fall,"
For he knows which fountain dries
Behind which desert-belt

A thousand leagues to the South.

He can foresay: "She will rise."
He knows what far snows melt;

Along what mountain-wall

A thousand leagues to the North.
He snuffs the coming drouth

As he snuffs the coming rain,

He knows what each will bring forth, And turns it to his gain.

A Ruler without a Throne,
A Prince without a Sword,
Israel follows his quest.
In every land a guest,
Of many lands a lord,

In no land King is he.

But the Fifth Great River keeps

The secret of Her deeps

For Israel alone,

As it was ordered to be.

CHAPTER HEADINGS

THE NAULAHKA

We meet in an evil land
That is near to the gates of hell.
I wait for thy command

To serve, to speed or withstand.
And thou sayest, I do not well?

Oh Love, the flowers so red
Are only tongues of flame

The earth is full of the dead,
The new-killed, restless dead.

There is danger beneath and o'erhead
And I guard thy gates in fear

Of peril and jeopardy

Of words thou canst not hear

Of signs thou canst not see

And thou sayest 'tis ill that I come?

This I saw when the rites were done

And the lamps were dead and the Gods alone,

And the grey snake coiled on the altar stone.
Ere I fled from a Fear that I could not see
And the Gods of the East made mouths at me.

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,

For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Aryan down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white

with the name of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear;

"A fool lies here who

tried to hustle the East."

Beat off in our last fight were we?
The greater need to seek the sea.
For Fortune changeth as the moon
To caravel and picaroon.

Then Eastward Ho! Or Westward Ho!
Whichever wind may meetest blow

Our quarry sails on either sea

Fat prey for such bold lads as we

And every sun-dried buccaneer

Must hand and reef and watch and steer,

And bear great wrath of sea and sky

Before the plate-ships wallow by.
Now as our tall bows take the foam
Let no man turn his heart to home
Save to desire treasure more

And larger warehouse for his store
When treasure trove from Santos Bay
Shall make our sea-washed village gay.

Because I sought it far from men
In deserts and alone

I found it burning overhead

The jewel of a Throne.

Because I sought

I sought it so

And spent my days to find

It blazed one moment ere it left

The blacker night behind.

When a lover hies abroad

Looking for his love,

Azrael smiling sheathes his sword,

Heaven smiles above.

Earth and sea