Oh, bard of Avon, thou whose measured muse
Most sweetly sings Elizabethan views
To shame ungentle smiths of journalese
With thy sublimest verse, what words are these
That shine amid the lines like jewels set
But ere thine hour no bard had chosen yet?
Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law
Not only limn the truths no others saw
But also, lord not slave of written word,
Lend ear to what no other poet heard
And, liberal minded on the Mermaid bench
With bow for blade and chaff for serving wench
Await from overseas slang-slinging Jack
Who brought the new vocabulary back?


So we three stood still in a row disconsolate, with three ragged
men of Zeitoon holding our horses and theirs, and watched Monty ride
away in the midst of Kagig's motley command, he not turning to wave
back to us because he did not like the parting any better than we
did, although he had pretended to be all in favor of it.

Kagig had left us one mule for our luggage, and the beast was unlikely
to be overburdened, for at the last minute he had turned surly, and
as he sat like a general of division to watch his patch-and-string
command go by he showed how Eye of Zeitoon only failed him for a
title in giving his other eye--the one he kept on us--too little
credit. It was a good-looking crowd of irregulars that he reviewed,
and every bearded, goat-skin clad veteran in it had a word to say
to him, and he an answer--sometimes a sermon by way of answer. But