upon
his neck to the Park in far New York.
Here women, light-heeled, heavy-haunched, pace up and
down the flags in graceful gait.
My roses these, I cry, and my orange blossoms.
But the goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was
dumb.
The cyclamens, the anemones, the daisies, I saw them, but I
could not speak to them.
The goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was
dumb.
O take me back to my own groves, I cried, or let me speak.
But he threw me off his shoulders in a huff, among the daisies
and the cyclamens.
Alone among them, but I could not speak.
He had tied my tongue, the goblin, and left me there alone.
And in front of me, and towards me, and beside me,
Walked Allah's fairest cyclamens and anemones.
I smell them, and the tears flow down my cheeks;
I can not even like the noon-day bulbul
Whisper with my wings, salaam!
I sit me on a bench and weep.
And in my heart I sing
O, let me be a burro-boy again;
O, let me sleep among the cyclamens
Of my own land.

Shades of Whitman! But Whitman, thou Donkey, never weeps. Whitman, if
that goblin tried to silence him, would have wrung his neck, after he
had ridden upon it. The above, nevertheless, deserves the space we
give it here, as it shadows forth one of the essential elements of
Khalid's spiritual make-up. But this slight symptom of that disease we
named, this morbidness incident to adolescence, is eventually overcome
by a dictionary and a grammar. Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to
scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has
become far-sighted enough by the process to see the necessity of
pursuing in America something more spiritual than peddling crosses and
scapulars. Especially in this America, where the alphabet is spread
broadcast, and free of charge. And so, he sets himself to the task of
self-education. He feels the embryo stir within him, and in the
squeamishness of enceinteship, he asks but for a few of the fruits of
knowledge. Ah, but he becomes voracious of a sudden, and the little
pocket dictionary is devoured entirely in three sittings. Hence his
folly of treating his thoughts and fancies, as he was treated by the
goblin. For do not words often rob a fancy of its tongue, or a thought
of its soul? Many of the pieces Khalid wrote when he was devouring
dictionaries were finally disposed of in a most p