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‘ A cold
coming we had of it,
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Just the worst time of the year
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For a journey, and such a long journey:
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The ways deep and the weather sharp,
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The very dead of winter.’
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And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
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Lying down in the melting snow.
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There were times we regretted
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The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
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And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
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Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
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And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
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And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
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And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
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And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
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A hard time we had of it.
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At the end we preferred to travel all night,
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Sleeping in snatches,
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With the voices singing in our ears, saying
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That this was all folly.
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Then at
dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
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Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
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With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
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And three trees on the low sky.
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And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
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Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
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Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
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And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
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But there was no information, and so we continued
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And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
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Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
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All this
was a long time ago, I remember,
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And I would do it again, but set down
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This set down
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This: were we led all that way for
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Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
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We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
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But had thought they were different; this Birth was
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Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
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We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
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But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
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With an alien people clutching their gods.
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I should be glad of another death.