And there for thirteen years I held my head,
Until the dupes decided I was dead.
Indeed I spent the better part in sleep,
Lest I should be beguiled from abstract chatter
By lust for this world's striped and dazzling matter.
"Night brought me counsel, and a pock-marked Kurd
Or angels brought me food. Day spared my dreams
That tilled the solitude like slow white teams
Of oxen, till it blossomed, and I heard
The Roc's huge pinions scour the starry cobbles;
And so I rose above all human squabbles.
"For me the burning haze made sandhills dance,
Till blushing shadows covered their nude breasts.
The eternal heirs of leisure were my guests,
And feasted on my glory in advance.
Then on an eve among the eves.... The End!
My soul sat by me talking as a friend.
"I bleached my beard, and came to Ispahan.
You know the rest. To Allah's will I bowed
In suffering the plaudits of the crowd,
For all must listen; those must preach who can.
I stirred the town with fingers raised to bless....
And gauged the people by my emptiness."
The caravan was gone. Its song survived
A little, faint, an echo, not at all.
Then like a magic carpet warmth was drawn
Back into heaven, and left behind a void
Where thin-faced breezes, huddling from the hills,
Sat down to breathe hard tales upon their hands.
And suddenly earth looked her age. Like her
The shapes round Ali-el-Kerbelaï shivered,
Pulling their coloured _abbas_ to their ears
And drawing in their feet. At last one spoke:
"O master, you to whom the world is known,
What is your thought's conclusion, what the sum
Of added knowledge in the tome of YOU?"
And Ali answered weighing out his words:
"Sir, I have seen the East and West, great peace,
Great wars, indifferent fates that blessed or cursed
Their builders. I have touched the best and worst
In flesh and thought, have watched flames rise and cease,
Consoled high hopes, deep passions, men that die
For things beneath the earth, behind the sky,
"For god or woman. I have counted change
For the Sarraf of Changelessness, have marked
Kings, Wazirs, coursed by sons of dogs that barked
And bit, the uninhabitable range
Of power, where all that climb in others' shoes
Are honoured and unperched like cockatoos.
"Now having known mankind in hell and bliss
Through thrice a generation, I have formed
From all the problems I besieged or stormed
One firm conviction, only one! 'Tis this:
The Faith, the Pomp, the Loves, the Lives of men
Outshine the firefly and outcrest the wren."
He added as he rose: "But God is great."
And bent, repassing through the city gate,
Lest he should bump his venerable pate.
XVI
THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC
Beside the Sufis ran a whited wall.
Two cypress-trees peeped over from the waist,
Stiff, motionless as toys. Among their spires
A lithe voice mounted and leaned down again:
"Come, for to-night the hills are all white marble
Under a sapphire dome,
Where bats scrawl riddles which the bulbuls garble
For owls to answer. Come.
"The air is sick of moon-discoloured roses,
The plain stagnates like some
Weird archipelago of garden-closes
And dead, bleached waters. Come.
"O night of miracles! Come, let us wander
Over this ghostly sea
To that dark cypress-circled island yonder,
In whose clear centre we
"Will lie and float in phosphorescent ether.
Thank heaven that night is cool
As day was scorching. Let us watch together
The lovers in the pool.
"Look in! Lie still! A jewelled ripple spangles
The hand upon her hair;
While, lying listless on her back, she dangles
A finger in the air.
"How still he is. Your motionless perfection
Absorbs him utterly.
Doubtless you seem to him his love's reflection
Face downwards in the sky,
"Whence I am hanging, seeing only her face,
As he sees only yours.
Lean down! And they shall meet us at the surface.
O silent paramours
"We bring to you, by stealth, while men are sleeping,
A gift. Let your domain
Have it for ever in its steadfast keeping;
We shall not come again.
"We bring our shadows: just the fleeting semblance
Of human love. O might
Your waters hold them for us in remembrance
Of one short summer night!
"A wondrous night, when two reflections hovered,
Dreaming of love aloud
Here by the pool, until the moon was covered
By an impending cloud;
"And then they lost each other. Where but lately
The magic mirror shone,
A wider shadow, cruelly, sedately,
Passes ... and we are gone."
The Dreamer stayed: "Who speaks of passing here?
The river passes, passes to the sea,
Drawing in rills the voices of the earth
To make its voice that merges in the swell.
The river passes and the boatman's chant
Is swallowed up in distance and the night.
Or is it, friend, the boats alone that pass?
The river, as I sometimes think, remains.
Even so it is with lovers and with love.
Then sing us something wise where laughter lurks,
As underneath the desert, from the hills
Whence cometh help, the hidden water-course
Chuckles. Upon this thread your garden hangs.
Nay, never shake that cypress head! We need
Not only sun but cloud and tears to build
Laughter, the rainbow of the inner man."
But the voice answered, or the cypress sighed:
"I am the brain of Hitherto.
In darkness I revolve and flash.
Books are the fortune I ran through.
My painted pen-case, yellow hue
And yellow sash
"Were famed from Yezd to Yezdikhast.
I taught what space and learned what mud is.
My metaphysics were my past.
Alas, I left my lust till last
Of all my studies.
"I kept my mind so clear and keen
By grinding guesswork into saws,
You scarce could fit a meal between
The triumphs of my thought-machine,
Its puissant jaws.
"The process of my intellect,
Mazed by the clapping hands that fed it,
Rolled on. They, founding a new sect
On premises that I had wrecked,
Gave me the credit.
"And so I used my fame to part
Man from his planks to sink or swim;
I plumbed his shallows, drew the chart....
Illusions broke the blacksmith's heart.
I envied him
"Suddenly, and set out to moon
About this garden scholarwise.
One silver laugh, two silken shoon,
To fill my empty _anderûn_
With splendid lies
"I ask of shadows, battering
My bars, and wonder why I ache.
O You who made both cage and wing,
Let me redeem my toilsome spring
By one mistake."
In the parched road the Dreamer took his lute
And tossed these chords across the battlement:
"The myrtles of Damascus,
The willows of Gilan,
Have sent the breeze to ask us
If aught but sceptics can
Deny the spirit calling
To flesh--we are the call--
And save themselves from falling
Behind a whited wall.
"Most pure was Abu Bakr,
And Allah speeds the plough
That furrows young wiseacre
Across an open brow.
Most fair is self-possession--
Give me the open road--
But Solomon in session
Went mad and wrote an ode.
"All fields of thought are arid,
No earthly soil is rich,
By thirst of knowledge harried
And those ambitions which
The heart like Pharaoh's harden
To let no impulse go.
But every yard's a garden
Through which we mystics flow.
"I conjure hawthorn blossom
From Bakhtiari vales--
As when one looks across some
Choked channel where the sails
Of anchored vessels jostle--
I tune their rhythmic sway
In hollows where the throstle
Is only dumb by day.
"Red routs of rhododendron,
That slope to Trebizond,
Rapt round the garden's end run
To mask the waste beyond.
There facts are free to wonder
Down pathways like the streak
Of silver pavement under
The palms of Basra creek.
"In charity of jasmin
My poor designs are clad,
As nature cloaked the chasm in
The ramparts of Baghdad,
Where passed the fabled Caliph
With Giafar by night
To mystify the bailiff
At Garden-of-Delight.
"The orchard-grave of Omar,
Neglected Nishapur,
Where sprays of petaled foam are,
Sighs through my garden-door
With boughs round whose gnarled stem men
Had never thought to twine
Green tendrils from rich Yemen,
The sunburnt Smyrniot vine.
"Wild lilies, whose rich red owes
Its undertone to brown,
From Kurd-betented meadows
Break out in every town.
Blind alleys' bursts of lilac,
Where russet warblers woo,
Are set to cover my lack
Of vocal retinue.
"The myrtles of Damascus,
The poppies of Shiraz,
Have sent the breeze to ask us
If they are dumb, because
Wisdom and one that had her
To wife still hug the fence,
Where we have left a ladder
To rescue men from sense."
The cypress swayed. Hard by another voice
Climbed the twin tree, and thus its theme began:
"Young man, Shirín is out of date.
We have to thank the West
That Attar's latest is too late
To waken Interest,
And one of Love's great names, Majnûn,
Is now generic for a loon.
"Our crust is cooling, and the bent
For culture bears its fruit,
As we that weed out sentiment
Likewise outgrow the brute;
While Providence matures a blend
That pure philosophers commend
"In logic. Constancy declined
Because we pruned our morals.
Love practises the change of mind
That ethics preach in quarrels...."
There cried the Dreamer: "Who are you that mock
Exiles in search of that from which they came,
Intent to know themselves and so the Lord
Whose ways are as the number of men's souls?
By these we compass our escape from Self,
The mirage in the waste through which we pass
Across the bridge Phantasmal to the Real;
Until, forgetting Self, we see in All
The Loved that leads us to the eternal beauty
Shown in a thousand mirrors yet but one.
These are the Sufi tenets. What of you?"
From the first tree the quavering voice replied:
"It is my double, Peder Sag,
The summit of the civilized
Above such heats as woman or flag.
It is my double, Peder Sag,
Who bows the poet to the wag,
The hero to the undersized.
It is my double, Peder Sag,
The summit of the civilized.
"His mission is to educate
By atrophy, the cure for spasm,
And so to serve the future state.
His mission is to educate
A world of fellowships that hate
One living thing--enthusiasm.
His mission is to educate
By atrophy, the cure for spasm.
"He dresses us in faultless drab.
His colour-scheme for you is tan,
And, level as a marble slab,
He dresses us in faultless drab.
Him urchins call Abu Kilab:
The Father-of-the-Modern-Man.
He dresses us in faultless drab.
His colour-scheme for you is tan.
"My double did a deal for truth.
He teaches balance to the Young,
And knows a better thing than youth.
My double did a deal for truth,
His emblem is the wisdom tooth,
A flowery and fruitless tongue.
My double did a deal for truth.
He teaches balance to the Young."
Serdar-i-Jang impatient pulled his beard
And growling Tous his bridle: "Let him be
The fool I was, and so mine enemy
From whom I part in peace." Farid Bahadur
Shrugged that: "Our wares are not for such as these."
Once more the Brain: "I might have come with you,
Leaving my gloomy castle in the air,
For, overgrown with tangles, in its flank
Lies hid the thrice-veiled door of happiness;
Only--my double has mislaid the key."
Seyid Rida laughed and answered: "We have found it."
The Lover knocked: "'Tis I!"
The Loved One made reply:
"There is no room for two
Beyond the Gateway."
In solitude he learned
The Secret; so returned
Saying: "O Love, 'tis you."
And entered straightway.
A wicket opened gently of itself,
And so a sceptic joined the caravan.
XVII
THE PRIDE OF THE TAILOR
Oh, sliding down the desert from Shiraz
The tailor-man from Meshed tore his hose:
A crowning test, a broken man! "Ah, was
I born that fate might practise fancy-blows?
"The road is rougher than a magnate's mirth
Toward the humble, long as a bad debt.
I cannot dream of any woman worth
This cloth. To me 'twas dearer than a pet."
Then Dreamer-of-the-Age cried: "Bring me thread
Strong as the bridge as they call Pul-i-Katûn!
For Meshed's champion tailor-man is dead
Unless his wounded pride be succoured soon."
Launched on the seaward slope the pilgrims went
On to the gulf, and heard, athwart the dim
Night echoing, a sufferer's lament
And Dreamer-of-the-Age consoling him:
"The night fits down on the desert, brother;
We are drawn there-through like a piece of thread.
The steepened sky and the vastness smother
Uneasy sleep in her league-wide bed.
Rocked to and fro with a camel's burden
On broken tracks, that are thin as scars,
We near the Gulf. Have we seen our guerdon?"
"Yea, every night we have seen the stars."
"The dust is thick, and our own feet raise it.
Our eyes were clear did our feet but rest.
We give our heart and no sign repays it.
What need we ever a further test!
We drift along with the old dumb neighbour
In the old blind alley we call our goal,
Hope: all that comes of a soul's life-labour."
"It was the labour that made the soul."
"We stride ahead, but in every village
A brother faints and a weakness falls.
The tribes that till and the tribes that pillage
Are reconciled with the life that palls.
Oh, townsmen tread to a fixed thanksgiving,
But what of us, if these pitying throngs
Should ask the end of our harder living?"
"God knows the answer. They know our songs,
"The coloured patch on the background, Silence,
The gleaming thought that is Love's to wear
Undimmed through space to a myriad-while hence.
Could the hands be worthy that knew not care
To weave Love's garb? Though we needs must suffer,
Shall we sing the worse that we sing in vain?
Our songs shall rise as the road grows rougher.
In the breathless hills, in the fevered plain,
"They mount as sparks from the night's oases,
And fall far short of the idol's feet.
They are stored by God in his secret places,
The least-lit stars of his darkest street.
Yet ten worlds hence they shall dance, my brother,
To travelling winds.... If our songs were worth
One gleam of light to the Way of Another,
We bless the sorrow that gave them birth."
XVIII
THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURER
So to the journey's end. The Gulf was there
Steaming and soundless, and the weary feet
Were stayed at last from following the Queen.
The great _dhow_ nosed the creek; slow water lapped
About her burnished; burnished in her sat
Unmoving bronze, her oarsmen. Then they rose:
"Hail, Bringers of the Queen!" "Hail, ship! you bear
What cargo hence?" "We carry on your charge."
"But leave us nothing--nothing in exchange?"
"Only the ancient story of a slave.
There lies a secret buried none too deep."
Thus the chief rower. This the far-off tale.
I dwelled beside the impulsive Rhone, a child that loved to be
alone.
The forest was my nursery. My happiness was all my own.
I knew by name each cloud that lowers the sunshine through in
liquid showers.
Deep in the tangled undergrowth I caught the singing of the
flowers.
Our minstrels sang of rape and arson, all the joys of private wars.
The forest wall was calm and tall. My tutor laughed, and drank to
Mars.
Bald, vulture-like upon its perch, our crag-born castle seemed to
search
The gorge for prey, its shade to still the bells a-twitter in the
church
Where, cheek by jowl with fearsome fowl and gargoyle, ghostly men,
in foul
Incense that tried to stifle me, recited magic formulæ.
At home clanked metal psalm and spur; but, oh the woods ...! I
tried to tame
A wolf-cub that the gardener called Life. He knew. The preacher
came.
I see him yet, his visage wet with hot emotion, tears, and sweat.
Contorted in the market-place he shrieked that all must pay a debt
To one Jehovah and His Son, by bursting eastward as the Hun
Had scourged the West. In unison we all replied 'twere nobly done,
For he explained that heaven was gained more featly--wrenching
Saint Jerome--
From Palestine than Christendom. That night no peasant durst go
home.
His words were like a wind that fanned a grass-fire: God would lend
His hand
To purge away the infidel whose breath profaned the Holy Land.
He showered indulgences, and kissed the brows of those who would
enlist
To take a chance of martyrdom or give the devil's tail a twist.
He promised we should see the light, that cursèd Arabs could not
fight,
Counted them dead since we were "led by General Jesus," said the
pope.
Moreover we must win and use Christ, His true Cross, the Widow's
cruse,
All talismans that found no scope for miracles among the Jews.
Upon the walls the veriest dolt and clown, arow like birds that
moult,
Chattered with one accord--or some small priestly prompting:--
"Diex el volt."
No wonder that our heartstrings glowed within us like a smelted
lode
Whence Kobolds welded Durandal; and like one man we ran or rode
Forth. Were we not enchanted? This was first among God's
certainties.
Even our steeds were like Shabdíz, the pride of King Khusraw
Parvíz.
We saw our path made plain, the hills removed by faith, whose
foaming course
Flooded the continents like flats. We saw the world made one--by
force.
In ecstasy our spirits soared. With beatific face toward
My cloudland all the crowd shed tears, and vowed to serve and save
the Lord.
But cloudland, seeming to disdain such warmth, replied with
slapping rain.
Conjuring such black augury the monks recited formulæ.
Besides, lest women, priests and traders should tempt the appetite
of raiders,
The Church proclaimed the Truce of God. Not all our barons were
crusaders.
Those who were frightened not to go sold all they had to make a
show,
Land, tool and ware to pay a fare. The panic made sly kings its
heir.
So much was sold by young and old, by fond, ambitious, hot and
cold,
That steel took sudden silver wings, then flew beyond the reach of
gold.
In such a gust my tender age availed not with the preaching sage,
For I was born of fighting men; and one of them took me for page,
Though I was loth to go, and prayed for mercy and a little maid
Whose hair was shining sunflower brown. I thought of all the games
we played
All day with hay and idle mowers. She dubbed me knight in pixy
bowers,
Where in the hindering undergrowth I caught the singing of the
flowers,
Ah me, how distant!... I was blest in my young lord who shared the
test,
Being sent upon this pilgrimage, his snow-white love still
unpossessed.
He, too, was paler than a ghost, as though already all were lost.
She dreamed of empery for him. He taught me this to show the cost:
_My heart was mine.
Ambition kept it whole.
I gained the world,
And so I lost my soul._
_Then you were mine,
But only mine in part.
You loved the world,
And so I lost my heart._
Only my tutor lay abed, calling us savages, and read
His pagan books. The fever would abate, he sneered, when we were
bled.
He chilled me. His head was like a block of ice, so clear. He tried
to shock
Me with his whispered flings that saints and monarchs came of
laughing-stock,
Or boasted some loud organ, Reason, which doctors had confused with
treason,
Looked round lest walls should hear, then wept that he was one born
out of season.
Our preaching-man pronounced a ban upon him, cried good riddance:
he
Was like to lead young men astray because he knew geography,
(And sciences, as medicine, reduce the value of a shrine).
My tutor passed for riding gnomes through space upon a pack of
tomes.
But at the water-parting I waved to the castle green and dun,
A tapestry where liquid sun--or tears--had made the colours run.
I looked my last on every stone and tree to whom my face was known.
The warriors smiled and called me child. They had not understood
the Rhone,
Nor that I _loved_ the birchwood's skin, the pansy's face, the
sheep-dog's grin,
That sleep with Nature in a field was sweet to me as mortal sin.
For love so fierce I stole: I gave my summer holidays to save
Lambs from the butcher, built for them sanctuary at my wolf-cub's
grave.
I stroked the landscape like a lute. No scentless words, no colours
mute,
Could paint its music. Henceforth I had only heaven for substitute.
Sling, crossbow, bludgeon, axe and spud, cilice and vials of sacred
blood,
On such equipment we relied. Our foes were misery and mud.
Each Norman keep, each Frankish hold, each corner of the Christian
fold
Sent forth its sheep to sound of bells. Our prophets might have had
them tolled.
Prince, abbot, squire, felt the desire of bliss that swept stews,
taverns, farms.
Soft damosels ploughed through the mire with babe at breast and
men-at-arms;
And, since this journey was the price of entrance into Paradise,
The gaols belched out their criminals and beggars all alive with
lice.
We took no food, for God is good; besides we heard that convents
strewed
Converted Hungary for us. We never dared mistrust His mood.
Heading the mass far up the pass, that led us straight to Calvary,
The preaching-man upon an ass recited magic formulæ.
Soon we were joined by northern lords; no few among their folk had
swords.
(Walter the Pennyless his rout had gone before and died in hordes,
While Gotschalk's dupes, with geese and goats upon their flags, had
found the boats
To pass beyond the Bosphorus, where Kilidj Arslan cut their
throats.)
Our force could not await the Turk, but in its ardour got to work
That was not mentioned in the breves. It murdered all the Jews in
Treves.
And I was sad a Christian lad should march with myrmidons so mad.
They made our Holy War appear too near a Musulman Jehad.
We plodded on for many weeks through mazes where the Austrian ekes
A bare existence on the slips of alp below the granite peaks,
And all those weeks did naught betide us palmers save that many
died.
Our gaol-birds eyed the preaching-man, and scholars spoke of
vaticide;
But I was happy when our stout commander sent me on to scout.
I cried for little Sunflower-tress, and made strange faces at the
trout.
Because I was a fighting-man I trained myself to nettle-stings,
And copied oaths and made up things my tutor would have tried to
scan:
_Briar and bramble,
Don't be so dense.
You scratch and you scramble
Like things without sense.
Why grudge me a ramble?
You can't want my hose,
White-coated bramble,
Pink briar-rose._
_Bramble and briar,
Leave me alone.
Cling to the friar,
Make him your own.
Kiss him, the liar
Who brought us all here,
Gentle sweet-briar,
Bramble my dear._
Thus through the months of slapping rain we plunged into the
Hungarian plain,
And paid its mounted bowmen dear for wretched stocks of fruit and
grain,
Or shelter in a reed-built town. They asked for hostages. We gave
Our leaders to these dirty-brown mongrels, who brought us to the
Save
With loss. My tutor's Damocles perhaps had lived in times like
these;
For whoso straggled from the main body was never seen again.
Ere this my rhyme had spread, and swelled into a marching-song. I
blushed
To witness how the spearmen held their sides with laughter, as they
yelled
"Bramble and briar." 'Twas the first faint mutiny. These men of
Gaul
Bantered the sterner pilgrims so I wondered why they came at all.
Yea, often now that I am old and hear how zealous scribes have told
The zeal that made the first crusade, well--history is eaten cold.
My lord could think of nothing but the lady who had bidden him cut
His way to her by such detours. Aye, this was true romance--the
slut.
We called her secretly The Burr--whereof was plenty in our beds--
For night by night he crooned of her, nor even named the Sepulchre:
_I waited, and the hours were loth to close.
They scarcely stirred till evening leapt to sight
Between the shadows that all substance throws
As bridges for its passage to the night._
_You never came. Life dozes at the touch
Of those not wholly resolute to live,
Who let themselves mistrust her overmuch
To take the only thing she has to give._
Amid the rags there caracoled fop-penitents whose panders lolled
With human baggage in the rear, and hound and hawk. So chaos rolled
Adown the Danube rolling east. Beyond Semlin the pinewoods filled
With Celt and Saxon, man and beast inspired to leave the west
untilled.
The locust-swarms were better drilled than we, the owls were not so
blind.
At every stage we left behind poor simpletons that moaned and
shrilled,
Thinking each swamp Gethsemane. It seemed that at their agony
The doctors scoffed with cross aloft, reciting magic formulæ.
Alone the princes lightly pranced, as if the pilgrimage enhanced
Their right to weigh upon the world thereafter. So the doom
advanced
To dervish cries and jester's japes. Hermit and boor and
jackanapes,
I and my ghost-pale master threw a trail of shadows, motley shapes,
Where Rhodopé's wine-purples mix snow with the moonlight. Oh, 'twas
gall
Amid the horror of it all that Bulgars thought us lunatics,
Or worse; for ever at our flank a stream, that in my nostrils
stank,
Seethed; and amid the best of her the scum of Europe wenched and
drank.
At last we halted where Constantinople's grandeur puts to scorn
The villaged west, and challenges the Orient on her Golden Horn.