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With profuse apologies to TS Eliot
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| A cold coming we had of it,/Just the worst time of the year./For a journey, and such a long journey:/The ways deep and the weather sharp,/The very dead of winter./ | |
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| And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,/Lying down in the melting snow./There were times we regretted,/The summer papaces on slopes, the terraces,/And the silken girls bringing sherbet./ | |
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| Then the camel men cursing and grumbling/And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,/And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,/And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly/ | |
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| And the villagers dirty and charging high prices:/A hard time we had of it/At the end we preferred to travel all night,/Sleeping in snatches,/With voices singing in our ears, saying/ | |
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| That this was all folly.//Then at dawn we came down to a temperate calley,/Wet, below the snow lone, smelling of vegetation;/With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,/ | |
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| And three trees on the low sky,/And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow./Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,/Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,/ | |
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