Explore "A Better Woe" by Ameen Rihani on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Of all my desert days / Thou art the only one / Upon whose sandy face / A strip of pleasure's foliage trembling grows; / Of all the winding ways.
Which with my rapture shone / But one can I retrace, / And there the barren breast of beauty glows.
Of all the dread desires, / That beat within me still, / One shakes the sacred fear / And hurls me into the arms of her below; / But oh, how life suspires -- / How soon after the thrill / Of joy I shudder, I hear / My murmuring soul pine for a better woe.