The Conscript

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Title:     The Conscript
Author: Cale Young Rice [More Titles by Rice]

The camel at the old sakiyeh
Toils around and round.
Aweary is he of the Nile
And of the wailing sound
Of the slow wheel he turns all day
To lift the water on its way
Over the fields of Ahmed Bey,
That with green grain abound.

Aweary is he, too, of fellaheen
Who compel him on,
With thick-voiced chanting till the day
Over the West has gone.
For the bold Desert was he made,
The Bedouin, his lord, to aid,
Not for this peasant wheel of trade
That ever must be drawn.

But on he toils while dahabiyeh
And dark felucca glide
Below him on the glassy flow
Of the gray river's tide.
Then when the night has come lies down,
In sleep the servile day to drown--
Like all whom Life turns with a frown
From their true fate aside.

[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: Conscript

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