In three white terraces the circle lies, piled one on
one toward Heaven. And on each terrace the
white balustrade climbs in aspiring marble, etched
in cloud.
And Heaven is very near.
For this is worship native as the air, wide as the
wind, and poignant as the rain,
Pure aspiration, the eternal dream.

Beneath the leaning sky this great white circle!

Peking


The Chair Ride

The coolies lift and strain;
My chair creaks rhythmically.
It is not yet morning and the live darkness pushes
about us, a greedy darkness that has swallowed
even the stars.
In all the world there is left only my chair, with the
tiny horn lantern before it.
There are also, it is true, the undersides of trees in
the lantern-light and the stony path that flows
past ceaselessly.
But these things flit and change.
Only I and the chair and the darkness are permanent.
We have been moving so since time was in the