Went as wine to a single head,
Took its chiefs for the sun's postillions,
Claimed to speak in its founder's stead;
Till in the western skies
Reason's epiphanies
Beckoned the other-wise
Men to rebirth.
Doubt, that makes spirits lithe,
Woke and began to writhe,
Burst through the osier withe,
Freed the old earth.
Nature cried out again for recognition,
Claiming that flesh is more than mere transition,
That mouths were made for sweeter things than prayer.
Yea, she, that first revealed the superhuman,
Out of the depths in us shall bring the new man
Who knows that earth is fair,
And Afterwards--who knows!"
We knew his childish searching meant no harm,
But his own people somehow took alarm;
For when his heart was healed, and he returned
With songs, 'tis said that he and they were burned.
Only this one survived. I put it by
Lest one who lived so much should wholly die.
He tried to spend far more than every day,
And never asked what he would have to pay.
To him a pint of music was a potion
That set him dabbling in some small emotion.
Wherever he could drown he marked an ocean
He got no pleasure but the pains he took
To bring himself to death by one small book
Filled with what he had heard, the babble of a brook.
XII
THE LEGEND OF THE PEASANT
They passed a field of purple _badinjan_.
A peasant raised his head to hear the tune,
And, seeking some excuse for holiday,
He followed humming ballads, this the first:
"It happened say a century ago,
Somewhere between Mazanderan and Fars,
A Frank was in the picture--that I know--
Mud-walls and roses, cypresses and stars,
White dust and shadows black.
"It happened She was loved by more than One,
Though no one now recalls the name and rank
Of even One, whose heart was like the stone
That framed the water of the garden tank
Long gone to utter wrack.
"It happened that one night She had a mind
To roam her garden. Youth was hidden there,
It happened One was watching from behind
A Judas-tree, though neither of the pair
Heard the twigs sigh and crack.
"It happened that next night She wandered out
Once more, and Youth was hiding there again.
And One sprang forth upon them with a shout,
And fanatics and _seyids_ in his train
Streamed in a wolfish pack.
"It happened that the sun found something red
Among the Judas-blossoms where Youth lay
Upon his face; a crow was on his head,
And desert dogs began to sniff and bay
At something in his back.
"It happened that none ever knew Her fate--
Except that She was never heard of more--
Save One, and two that through a secret gate--
Perhaps they knew--a struggling burden bore.
I think it was a sack."
Some one applauded; then the humming drone
Was stung to louder efforts, and went on:
"They staggered down the stiff black avenue,
Hiding the sack's convulsions from the moon,
To drown its cries they feigned the shrill _iouiou_
Of owls, then dropped it in the swift Karûn,
Paused, and admired the view.
"The ripples took her, trying not to leap,
But, copying the uneventful sky,
Serenely burnished where the stream grows deep
They smoothened their staccato lullaby.
And so she fell asleep
"Where no sharp rock disturbs the river bed,
A moving peace, whose eddies turn half-fain
Towards their youth's tumultuous watershed,
And slow blank scutcheons widen like a stain
Portending Sound is dead.
"No herd or village fouls the shining tide,
Till ocean lays a suzerain's armistice
On brawling tributaries. Like a bride
Greeting her lord it laved her with a kiss,
And left her purified.
"But the sea-_Jinn_, who dwell and dress in mauve,
And hunt blind monsters down the corridors
Between sunk vessels--fishers know the drove,
Their horns and conches and the quarry's roars
In autumn--hold that love
"Should meet with more than pardon. So the pack
Spliced up a wand of all the spillikin spars
Flagged with the purple fantasies of wrack,
Composed a spell not one of them could parse,
And tried it on the sack.
"'Twas filled with pearls! Each _Jinni_ dipped his hand,
And scattered trails through labyrinths of ooze,
Or sowed gems thick upon the golden sand,
Festooned a bed from Bahrein to Ormuz,
Muscat to Ras Naband....
"_Hajji_, a deeper meaning than appears
Beneath the surface of my song may lurk
Like _Jinn_. How oft the crown of gathered years,
The dazzling things for which men thank their work,
Are made by Woman's tears."
Tous shook his head and grunted, ceaselessly
The caravan limped onward to the Gulf.
XIII
THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER
Serdar-i-Jang, the Wazir of the west,
Of all mankind had served his country best
By weeding it. The terror of his name
Lapped up the barren Pusht-i-kuh like flame,
Till the Shah smiled: "My other lords of war lose
Battles, but he wrings love from my Baharlus."
He smote them hip and thigh. The man was brave.
Having four wives, he needs must take for slave
Whatever captive baggage crossed his path,
And never feared love for its aftermath.
Thus fared the Wazir while his locks were blue.
The silver in them found him captive too.
The singing caravan in chorus flowed
Past the clay porticoes of his abode.
She came, he saw, was conquered--like a puppet
Drawn to the window, to the street and up it,
Forth to the desert, leaving in the lurch
His pleasant wars and policies to search
For what? He knew not. Haply for the truth
Whose home is open eyes, not dreams or youth.
But this he dimly knew, that something strange,
Beauty, had come within his vision's range;
And a new splendour, running through the world,
Drummed at the postern of his senses, hurled
Him forth, this warrior proud and taciturn,
Footsore upon a pilgrimage to learn
Humility.... These beggars, in whose wake
He toiled, ne'er paused for him to overtake
Their echoes. When at dusk he joined their ring
None rose or bowed. All watched him. Could he sing?
And he could not, for never had he thrown
His days away on verse! He sat alone,
So that his silence stamped him with the badge
Of hanger-on or menial of this _haj_.
Thrust as he would with much unseemly din,
He found no place beside the palanquin,
Till Seyid Rida, scholar of Nejaf,
Took pity on him, saying: "You shall laugh
At these black days when, having served your time,
You share the sovereignty of Persian rhyme.
Be patient, pray to Allah, O my son,
For power of worship. It shall come anon...."
Seyid Rida spoke in vain. The Wazir's place
So far behind the Queen, her perfect face
But half-divined, as Sight denied to Faith,
A doubt lest love itself should be a wraith
Dazzling but mocking him, these stirred his passion
To sworn defiance, to his last Circassian
And thoughts of many a woman taken by force,
Restive and then submissive as a horse.
And now.... He followed in the wake of vision
Lofty and pure as Elburz snows. Derision
Would follow him in turn!... He shook his fist
Toward the feet his soul would fain have kissed:
"Oh, I was born for women, women, women.
Through my still boyhood rang the first alarm;
And since that terror ever fresh invaders
Have occupied and sacked me to their harm.
I am the cockpit where endemic fever
Holds the low country in a broken lease
From waves that ruined dykes appear to welcome.
Only one great emotion spares me--Peace!
"I have grown up for women, women, women;
And suffering has had her fill of me.
My ears still echo with receding laughter,
As shells retain the voices of the sea.
I am the gateway only, not the garden,
That opens from a crowded thoroughfare.
I stand ajar to every passing fancy,
And all have knocked, but none have rested there.
"And I shall die for women, women, women,
But not for love of them. Adventure calls
Or waits with old romance to disappoint me
Behind the promise of surrendered walls.
I am the vessel of some mad explorer,
That sails to seek for treasure in strange lands
Without a steersman in a crew of gallants,
And, finding fortune, ends with empty hands."
A deathly silence fell. Green-turbaned men
Fell noiselessly to sharpening their knives
On their bare hardened feet. Seyid Rida sighed:
"Alas, your heart is set upon reward
For gifts of self. You cannot understand
Love loves for nothing, brother. Those who serve
God the most purely cannot count that He
Will love them in return...."
The Wazir scowled.
But Dreamer-of-the-Age took him aside,
"I would unfold a story like a carpet.
The camel Tous told it to me last night:
"King Suleiman's wives were as jewels, his jewels as stones of the
desert
In number. His concubines herded as desert-gazelles in their grace,
That answered his bidding as meekly as all his wild animal kingdom,
The beasts and the birds and the fishes. Yet the world was as pitch
on his face.
"Now it chanced that the ruler of Saba had news by a merchant of
peacocks
From this king like a hawk-god of Egypt, whose beak was set deep in
the gloom
Of his grape-purple beard, and she said: 'We shall see how his
vanities stead him
When from under the arch of his eyebrows he sees my feet enter his
room.'
"For her feet were far whiter than manna. Her body was white as the
cry
Of a child when the chords of hosanna draw the beauty of holiness
nigh.
The droop of her eyelids would fan a revolt from Baghdad to Lake
Tsana,
Her fingers were veined alabaster. The sprites of her escort would
sigh,
"As they bathed her with sun set in amber and cooled in the snow of
a cloudlet,
And taught her chief eunuch to clamber up moonbeams as fleet as a
ghost:
These, lavish of reed-pipe and tamburine, slaves of the Son of
Daoud, let
Her palanquin down into Zeila--gambouge and magenta, the coast!"
And the Wazir cried, "Ha!" to the rhymes.
"Round the harbour a hoopoe was strutting, for Suleiman's Seal had
appointed
Him messenger-bird, and he thought: 'If I bring the good news of
this beauty,
This Sovereign of Silkiness, I shall harvest great thanks and
promotion.'
So he flew to the Presence and twittered a text on the pleasure of
Duty.
"'Fulfiller of faint Superstition, whose hand rolls the eyeballs of
Thunder,
And lightens forked tongues on a mission of menace to bat or to
eagle!
There comes to your portal a vision whose light shall make Israel
wonder.
Immortal her beauty and mortal her glance that is soft as a
seagull.'"
And the Wazir cried, "Hey!" to the rhymes.
"But Suleiman, sated with women and governance, lifted his beak
From his beard. Naught escaped the magician, not a thought, not a
tone. Ah, he knew
All! He said: 'I have measured your mind as my pity has measured my
people.
We shall speak of reward when she comes; I may live to regret
it--and you!
"'Lo, I am the servant of God, whom I serve as you serve me, not
asking
For pay by each day or each act, but just for the general sum.
The work of the world must be done without wage to be done to our
credit.
We shall profit in claiming our guerdon not by what we are but
become.'
"So the Queen came to Kuddus. Mashallah! Shall a picture be limned
of her coming!
Flushed dancers and lutists athrumming light-limbed as Daoud round
the Ark!
Crushed roadway and crowd-applause rumbled, loud music, hushed
barbarous mumming!
To the cry, 'On to Sion' above her, this lover rode straight at her
mark!"
And the Wazir cried, "Ho!" to the rhymes.
"She had but to flatter the wizard to win him. He said to the
hoopoe:
'I will haggle no more. You shall learn to your cost what the
bargainer buys,
Whose faith levies toll upon duty, whose trust will not serve me on
trust,
Or love for Love. On your head be it.' The hoopoe said:
'_Cheshm_--on my eyes!'
"All other birds fainted with envy, as Suleiman lifted a digit.
Thereon was the Ring-of-most-Magic. Then he spat on the dust from
his bed,
And the miracle came! for the hoopoe went swaggering out of the
presence
(So he struts in his walking to-day) with a crown of pure gold on
his head.
"But the Jews thus learnt avarice. Some one spread news of the
bird-coronation
To the ends of the kingdom. The tribes ran out as one man armed
with lime,
Bows, nets, slings--and slew the hoopoes for the sake of their
crowns. There was profit
In sport then; none other has liked them so well since King
Suleiman's time.
"They divided the spoil till in Israel only our messenger-bird
Survived with two fellows.... He fled to Suleiman's closet for
_bast_,
Sobbing, 'Spare us, O king! Make a sign with the ring that men sing
of! We fare as
Amalekites. If I have sinned, I am punished. We three are the last
"'Of our race. In your grace turn your face to our case. We place
hope in your favour!
My brood is a Yahudi's food. Israel--who disputes it--insane
For gain. We are slain all day long by the strong sons of Cain. Let
us waive our
Gold bane for plain down, lest we drown in our own blood! Discrown
us again!'"
And the Wazir cried, "Hi!" to the rhymes.
"The King made reply. He was sadder than rain in the willows of
Jordan.
'We are God's passing thoughts. They alone that await their
fulfilment are wise.
You shall be for a warning, O hoopoe. I had given you more than
gold-wages
If you had believed we not only had ears, I and Allah, but eyes!
"'Yet giving is fraught with forgiveness. Now therefore the crown
you did covet
Is gone. You are healed of your pride; you shall live till the
Angel of Death errs
From Allah's command. By my Ring-of-most-Magic the gold is
transmuted.
Go forth! He has set for a sign on your brow a tiara of feathers.'
"So the hoopoe went forth in the glory of plumes that he won in
this wise
And wears. Then the hunters, assembled from the uttermost quarters
of Sham, should
Have shot, but did not, for they said: 'What a head! We will not
waste an arrow
On sport of this sort. We are sold! We were told it was gold
and....'"
Tamam Shud
And the Wazir shrieked "Halt!" at the rhymes.
But as he slept that night the Dreamer prayed
That understanding might bedew his head.
And so it was. The fountain of the Dawn
Rose in the whiteness of the month _Rajab_,
Washing the desert stones, and made each body
Shine as the sun-swift chariot of a soul.
While the last swimmer in the sea of slumber,
Out of the deep, its jungled bottom, its ghosts,
Its weight and wonders, rises to the surface
In final breaths of sleep, the Wazir stirred
And flung out joyful arms. Not otherwise
The groping diver in the Gulf of Pearls,
Having achieved adventure, comes to light
And grasps the painted gunwale--with his prize.
"For every hour and day
Of youth that spelled delay
In finding you, I pray
To life for pardon,
I that long since have faced
My task in patient haste:
Out of my former waste
To make your garden.
"With these soiled hands I made
My Self (man's hardest trade).
The sun was _you_: the shade
My toil, my seed did.
I drove my strong soul through
Years in the thought of you,
For whom my garden grew,
And grew unheeded;
"For you, an episode
That lay beside your road,
For me, my long abode,
My will's whole centre.
Lo now my task fulfilled,
Yet not the hope that thrilled
The stubborn realm I tilled
For you to enter.
"Ah, must all sacrifice
Be weighed with balance nice!
To ask the gods our price
Makes all creeds shoddy.
Then should I bargain now--
Troubling my worship--how
You will reward my vow
Of soul and body?
"I have not striven in vain,
Though all my poor domain
Cries daily for your reign.
I hold its treasure,
A source of splendour, known
Haply to me alone,
A boundless love--my own.
Had you but leisure
"To pause beside this spring
A moment, harkening
How through my silence sing
The dreams that here rest,
I yet might make you see
Some of the You in Me.
This song not I but we
Have written, dearest."
Long ropes of stillness joined the caravan
Closer together; no man spoke a word,
Till Dreamer-of-the-Age: "Friend, go up higher
At the Queen's right hand." Seyid Rida smiled:
"I knew you would outrun us." The Wazir
Heard neither fame nor blame, and so was blest
Because he sought praise only of the Queen.
XIV
THE MORAL OF THE SCHOLAR
At Ispahan the notables were met
In conclave. Seyid Rida, scholar scamp--
As Dawlatshah records--perched in the porch:
"Round the table sit the sages--
Different views and different ages--
Secretaries scribble pages,
Taking down each 'er' and 'hem,'
Taking down each word they utter
Like the solemn measured sputter
Of fat raindrops from a gutter.
I speak last of them.
"Outside in the summer weather
Birds are talking all together,
While a tiny pecked-out feather
Flutters past the pane.
Dare you own: The work before us
Seems at moments like their chorus,
Just a little more sonorous,
Similar in strain?
"Have a care! The bird that chatters
Is the only bird that matters,
Heedless of the hand that scatters
Grains of sense or chaff
Mid your Barmecides and Cleons.
I have listened here for æons
To these rooster-flights and pæans.
No one heard me laugh.
"Parrot, jackdaw, jay, and pigeon,
Prose would be the whole religion
Of the Nephelococcygian
State to which you steer.
If the earth remains a youngster
With some waywardness amongst her
Virtues, I should thank the songster
Whom you cannot hear.
"Tits that swing upon a thistle,
Wrens and chats that pipe and whistle,
Join their notes to our epistle,
Where the bee-fraught lime
Orchestrates the lark's espousal
Not of causes but carousal:
Owl, we hear you charge the ouzel
With a waste of time!
"Princeling, a fantastic prophet
Tweaks your robe and bids you doff it,
Offers you escape from Tophet
On the wings of words.
Spread them bravely, fly the town, sell
All you have for this one counsel:
Sing and never mind the groundsel!
Come, we too are birds."
Thereat the conclave fluttered and flew out,
And I have heard them on the Persian roads,
In half-dead cities. History repeats
Nothing except the rose. But Persians say
This was the last they heard of government.
XV
THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH
Alas! 'Twas time to go--"Conceal the wine,
The purple and the yellow infidel!"--
Rice cooked in saffron, honey-cakes, and _mast_
With many-coloured _shirini_ were all
Packed up in paunches capon-lined....
The Queen
Sailed through the city, mounted high on Tous,
Full in the moonlight, purer than the moon,
Whose beauty, being weighed with hers, the scale
Sent up to heaven and left the Queen on earth....
Followed quick tumbles to the lambent street,
Graspings of shoes, and search for garments lost,
With tunes that mounted all awry as flame
Draught-blown, short breaths and straggling feet.
The Dreamer
Reddened and drooped his head; for at the Gate
Sat a portentous Sheikh, thrice great in girth,
Ali-el-Kerbelaï, Known-of-Men,
To whom--he slept all day--his nightly school
Resorted in the porch. He saw, and shrugged
His shoulders, rounded in glory like the hills
That drift and clash about the Gulf of Pearls--
Bahreinis tell the tale lest rival _dhows_
Should venture into trade--and thus held forth:
"Gossips, I have watched fools wander through this gate
In generations. Never have I seen
Men so bewitched by one closed palanquin,
So little fain to chatter with the great,
So blind, or single-eyed, they did not see
Ali-el-Kerbelaï, even me.
"Poor souls! Dusk swamps our wriggling thoroughfares
Like trenches; and I rub my hands to think
How I to-night in coolth shall sleep and drink,
While sunrise takes these vagrants unawares.
Madmen set out each day to beard the sun,
And seventy years ago Your Slave was one.
"When all the world was young, that is when _I_
Was young, I promised Allah to be wise,
And started on the road of enterprise
That leads towards the snow-capped hills of Why,
Passing my hand across my shaven brow
Heavy with all the lower lore of How."
Ali-el-Kerbelaï sighed his soul
Out of his nostrils pious and serene,
For the swift curtain of the night had slid
Along the rings of stillness, as he peered
Into the plain. The singing caravan
Had dwindled slowly to a speck of white.
Then said the sage: "Behold they go to nothing,
These lovers, these far-eyed. To think they passed
Within a foot of wisdom and my robe!
Alas, they passed and knew not. 'Tis the risk
Of all such noisy dreamers. Ah, my head
Pities.... Well, God is great. And God made me.
"Thus first I reached Mohammerah, whose sheikh
In speechless gratitude besought a boon--
To make me eunuch in his _anderûn_--
For I had talked away his stomach-ache.
And of this epoch I need only say
I had fresh dates for dinner every day.
"But I was young. I spurned the unmanly job,
For I loved conquest, and the world lay flat
Before me like a purple praying-mat,
And all young women made my heart _kebob_,
Until the sheikh conceived himself disgraced.
Then I took ship from Basra--in some haste.
"We put to sea, fair sirs, a foul-faced sea
Puckered with viciousness and green with hate
Of all the sons of Adam; and black fate
Conspired with her to take account of me,
For all the _Jinn_ who lurk among the gales
Came down to fecundate our bellied sails.
"They blew. They thrust my skull against the sky,
The jade-backed _Jinn_ disguised as ocean-swell,
But I saw through them.... Down we went to hell,
Where Iblis tried to teach me blasphemy
In vain. No devil's wile could make me speak.
Thus I learned self-control. (I was so weak.)
"We drifted past bare cliff and jungle sedge,
Past spouting loose volcanoes known as whales,
And sirens that blew kisses with their tails,
Till we fell over the horizon's edge,
Fell sheer three thousand parasangs. And there
I first discovered that the world is square.
"We were in China, sir. The Home of Yellows,
Soil, porcelain, manuscripts, men.... Here I spent
Six weeks in stuffing to my heart's content
The thought-scraps given to these whoreson fellows
By heaven. My zeal picked all tradition's locks,
And knowledge opened like a lacquered box
"Wrought with strange figures.... Now I learned by heart
Eleven score ways of dodging every sin.
So, having sucked the marrow from Pekin,
I planned with Allah that I should depart,
And having thus obtained a ruly wind
I shone like lightning through the schools of Hind.
"I shall say little of Hind. Its mouth is wide
With sacred texts and precepts packed in lyrics
For carriage, verse unversed in our empirics.
I grasped all Indian knowledge like a bride
Without a dower, enjoyed and let her go,
Giving God thanks that only Persians _know_."
The singing caravan shrank in a clear
Green sideless tunnel of the firmament.
Ali-el-Kerbelaï paused and watched
Intent, even as by torchlight men spear fish,
While searching flame-reflections brushed and lit
The deep brown-watered caverns of his eyes,
Where dim shapes moved profoundly in the pool.
His listeners watched the sage in ecstasy
Poise, concentrate his massive thought on Nothing,
Heard his _narghilé_ bubble like a brain....
"From Hind to Misr. At Cairo's El-Azhar,
The flower of Moslem scholarship, I sat
Among the Sunni bastards. As a cat
Watches the sun through eyelids scarce ajar,
From dawn till evening prayer I laboured hard,
Lolling in ambush round the great courtyard
"To pounce on wingèd words. Athwart the arcade
Midday in golden bars came clanging down
Upon the anvil of each turbaned crown,
And many minds took refuge in my shade.
I was divinely hard to understand,
Talking until my throat was dry as sand.
"So to the mosque well--into it they pushed
A dog who disagreed with me--and drew
Relief what time the pigeons ceased to coo
Or rustle round its rainbow-juice. We hushed
Our flights of eloquence when my _roghan_
Sizzled complacent in the frying-pan.
"Mashallah, what a life! Yet in this scene
I found a fleck of rust upon my tongue.
Propelled by Fate and my own force of lung,
I flitted with two reverend _Maghrebín_
Whom I had favoured, having learned the trick
Of speaking their foul breed of Arabic.
"Immortal spirits led us, yea the chief
_Afrit_, the crown of all the _Afarit_.
We crossed the great Sahara like a street.
My fame allows me licence to be brief.
Enough. Whatever any sceptic says,
I still maintain I spent a year at Fez.
"Here was a sect that said one God was three.
I plied Moriscos who had tasted two
Beliefs perforce, I even asked a Jew
To make this strange _Tariqah_ clear; but he--
By this judge Christians--he could not explain,
Although his father had been burnt in Spain.
"Ah, how I studied in that narrow city,
Whose walls are changeless as a Persian law,
And full of loopholes. To the seers I saw
Is due the gamut of my human pity.
We stirred the puddles of the human mind
Till none could see the bottom but the blind.
"Now Shaitan tempted me. I fell for once,
A venial sin.... I journeyed to Stamboul
To plumb the errors of the _Greegi_ school.
'Twas there I read the Stagyrite, a dunce,
The Frankish ruler of theology,
And father of a dunce, Alfarabi.
"I laid him low and hurried home to indite
A book, the fruit of all my Thought and Travel,
Entitled 'Contemplation of the Navel,'
A mystic book. (But first I learned to write.)
Such of our doctors as can read have read it.
But I was bent on even higher credit.