Poems of India - Evening in the Opium Fields

As pageants, marshalled by a masterhand,

So are the poppy-fields; in rose and red

And foam of white and livid purple spread,

Mile upon mile, they stretch on either hand;

Dark by the well the heavy mangoes stand,

Where labouring oxen pace with dusty tread

And dripping water-skins climb up to shed

Their gush upon the irrigated land.

So cool the labyrinthine channels run,

Flooding the grey stems with a maze of gold;

For, as he nears his end, the dying sun

Does all the plain within his arms enfold;

Beneath the mangoe-trees long shadows creep,

Like sleep’s tread falling through the flowers of sleep.