Explore "Muléykeh" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If a stranger passed the tent of Hóseyn, he cried "A churl's! " / Or haply "God help the man who has neither salt nor bread! " / -- "Nay," would a friend exclaim, "he needs nor pity nor scorn / More than who spends small thought on the shore-sand, picking / pearls, / -- Holds but in light esteem the seed-sort, bears instead / On his breast a moon-like prize, some orb which of night makes morn.
"What if no flocks and herds enrich the son of Sinán? / They went when his tribe was mulct, ten thousand camels the due, / Blood-value paid perforce for a murder done of old. / 'God gave them, let them go! But never since time began, / Muléykeh, peerless mare, owned master the match of you, / And you are my prize, my Pearl: I laugh at men's land and gold!'