THE KASÎDAH III, 25, 36

Who step by step perforce returns
 to couthless youth, wan, white and cold,
Lisping again his broken words
 till all the tale be fully told:

Wond’ring the Babe with quenchèd orbs,
 an oldster bow’d by burthening years,
How ’scaped the skiff an hundred storms;
 how ’scaped the thread a thousand shears;

How coming to the Feast unbid,
 he found the gorgeous table spread
With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit,
 with stones that bear the shape of bread: