A Ballad to Old Camelback

A camel roamed mid the Sunset Hills in the days of long ago, When fairies danced to the echo flutes in the valley far below. They lured him close to the city gates, to the palace tall and grand, And the Princess laughed when he followed her and fed from her dainty hand, She decked his head with her beaded strands from the treasures of the king And made him a leash of silken cords, and his pack was a lacy thingSelah! 'twas a royal palanquin from the gold and purple spun, Where the lovely Princess rode each day to bask in the desert sun.

And his was a proud and stately stride as they made for Fairy-Land, For he loved the feel of her airy weight and the pat of her tiny hand. By the mossy pool where she came to bathe, on the luscious banks he browsed, And biding the hours of her gay caprice, he blinked and dreamed and drowsed.

But there came a day when she came no more, and he watched the mourners' train, As they bore her away from the palace gates never to return again. Alack! Alack! 'twas a sorry day when they bartered him for gold, When he joined the merchant's caravan and strode from the king's strong-hold.

They stripped his head of its beaded strands and trappings rich and rare, And they bruised his flanks with the weighted gourds and knotted the coarse thongs there. O'er brackish wastes and thirsty dunes they goaded him far away, On scanted fare and grudged slack, with a blow and a curse for pay.

The long years pass with their sodden toil and their days so drear and same, And he of the royal retinue has grown old and halt and lame. His hoary head is a sorry sight with his eyes grown bleared and dim, And his grizzly sides are writ with scars from the wars that have chastened him.

A creature flouted they let him lie when he fell in the noon-day glare, They smote his shackles and loosed his girth and left him to perish there. But the crooning twilight fanned his brow and its ozone eased his pain, And the desert mirage lured him on to take to the trail again.

Aye, the trail that led to the king's domain, tho a thousand leagues awayHis nostrils scented the mossy pool where the princess used to play. With dizzy steps he prodded on and he shook his mangy mane, Defying the heat and sun and sand and the sting of the desert rain.

He came at last to the Sunset Hills at the end of the weary trail, But where O where was the king's domain that had graced the fairy vale? The tangled jungle had climbed the walls and over the garden crept, The pool was dry and athirst and spent the camel lay down and wept.

The cacti-giants of the Sunset Hills have guarded him long and well, The moon has peeped thru Hole in the Rock for a thousand years, they tell, To paint the desert and stir his dreams of a vision calm and fair, When the little Princess will come again and will find him waiting there.

And youth will spring to his cramped old limbs at the touch of her tiny handSelah! in the royal palanquin he will bear her to Fairy-Land!