Explore "The World's Desire" by H. Rider Haggard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Come with us, ye whose hearts are set / On this, the Present to forget; / Come read the things whereof ye know / _They were not, and could not be so! _ / The murmur of the fallen creeds, / Like winds among wind-shaken reeds / Along the banks of holy Nile, / Shall echo in your ears the while; / The fables of the North and South / Shall mingle in a modern mouth; / The fancies of the West and East / Shall flock and flit about the feast / Like doves that cooled, with waving wing, / The banquets of the Cyprian king. / Old shapes of song that do not die / Shall haunt the halls of memory, / And though the Bow shall prelude clear / Shrill as the song of Gunnar's spear, / There answer sobs from lute and lyre / That murmured of The World's Desire.
There lives no man but he hath seen / The World's Desire, the fairy queen. / None but hath seen her to his cost, / Not one but loves what he has lost. / None is there but hath heard her sing / Divinely through his wandering; / Not one but he has followed far / The portent of the Bleeding Star; / Not one but he hath chanced to wake, / Dreamed of the Star and found the Snake. / Yet, through his dreams, a wandering fire, / Still, still she flits, THE WORLD'S DESIRE!