Poems (Proctor)/The Fair of Nijni Novgorod

by Edna Dean Proctor

THE FAIR OF NIJNI NOVGOROD.

Now, by the Tower of Babel! Was ever such a crowd?Here Turks and Jews and Gypsies, There Persians haughty-browed;With silken-robed Celestials, And Frenchmen from the Seine,And Khivans and Bokhariotes— Heirs of the Oxus plain.

Here stalk Siberian hunters; There tents a Kirghiz clanBy mournful-eyed Armenians From wave-girt Astrakhan;And Russ and Pole and Tartar, And mounted Cossack proud—Now, by the Tower of Babel! Was ever such a crowd?