The Desert Road by Gilbert Parker

In the sands I lived in a hut of palm, / There was never a garden to see; / There was never a path through the desert calm, / Nor a way through its storms for me.

Tenant was I of a lone domain; / The far pale caravans wound / To the rim of the sky, and vanished again; / My call in the waste was drowned.

The vultures came and hovered and fled; / And once there stole to my door / A white gazelle, but its eyes were dread / With the hurt of the wounds it bore.

It passed in the dusk with a foot of fear, / And the white cold mists rolled in; / And my heart was the heart of a stricken deer, / Of a soul in the snare of sin.

My days they withered like rootless things, / And the sands rolled on, rolled wide; / Like a pelican I, with broken wings, / Like a drifting barque on the tide.

But at last, in the light of a rose-red day, / In the windless glow of the morn, / From over the hills and from far away, / You came-ah, the joy of the morn!

And wherever your footsteps fell there crept / A path -- it was fair and wide; / A desert road which no sands have swept, / Where never a hope has died.

I followed you forth, and your beauty held / My heart like an ancient song, / By that desert road to the blossoming plains / I came, and the way was long.

So, I set my course by the light of your eyes; / I care not what fate may send; / On the road I tread shine the love-starred skies, / The road with never an end.