Classic Poem

It was a Turk in Tunis that I met,
Cross-legged upon a saffron-colored mat,
Silent and imperturbable he sat;
And like a nightmare I behold him yet—
Bronzed as a pagan god, smoke brown and dry
As parchment; yet his introspective eye,
Full of gray meditation on the themes
The world wots not of, seemed to gaze on dreams.
Through many terrors I have passed since then—
Wounded in battles, wrecked in midnight seas,
Wasted by famine among savages,
Grazing the grave in many ways; but when
IThink of that old Turk there at his ease,
It seems as if all this had never been!