sw00367jt-b1.e2

                                                                               Book I:   e1
Justan Tamarind: Book I       e2                             



This heard (another's chance to disapprove),
Lady Tarsk taunts Yuana:  "The grove,
My queen.  Now our king must burn it, and bid
Blind Mezdras, judge, to sentence Seth to rove
Forever through Viberian tundras, hid
From human hearing, human sight; for such
Has long seemed near, and many desire to rid
From them him: he who swings the olive crutch;
Would feast-high flush that prophet from his hutch

To Nomän or Soaxian wastes, if they
Wore such a potent crown."  But on this day,
Thoughts of grosser pains darken Justan's face.
And losing in his their cares, whether they
Are low in favor, as of Ham's cursed race,
Or high, as of the gloried Julus line,
The citizens calm, heedless of their place
Or that Sol-vitae's wheeling sears to wine;
Fuse round their king, round Moiland's thirty-nine:

Men (of reasoning bones, emotive flesh,
Selected from the Occi-Oriental mesh
All human time through procreation formed),
Earth treasures most; and who alone can thresh
Her given grains.  For these, when trials had stormed
Across their needful toils and crushed them out,
And left them starving while fat bears slept warmed
In rugged caves: these, who when tossed about
Unceasingly as were their parents, stout

And bold, who searched across another world,
Were cowards not; but knowing that the curled
And fearful insect still deprives itself
Of life for all its foolish feigning, burled
Their wills incessantly to thwart the Elf
Of hooked despairs and foster hope in their
Insatiable minds, transformed stones to wealth,
And suffering to eglantine.  So here,
Luborga and his wife, Rosine, preen; pare,

While, as in Aethea once, he chides her eye:
"Pretty one, I will protect you from the wry
And hard-faced. . . ."  Suddenly, from the tired,
Increasingly restless crowd, Hugh DeVry
(Son of Prince Gilbert DeVry, who expired
Those eighteen years ago in Aethea
When Hugh had lived barely two), his face fired
To rose, cries out:  "Solemn Justan, ah,
My king, you remember Geldarkta,




Brian A. J. Salchert