1.
Vased in her bedroom window, white
As her glad girlhood, never lost,
I smelt the roses; and the night
Outside was fog and frost.
What though I claimed her dying there!
God nor one angel understood
Nor cared, who from loved feet to hair
Had changed to mist her blood.
Love, love had claimed us long, and long
Our hearts sang harp-strung, late and soon;
But God!--God jangles thus the song
And makes discord of tune.
What lily lilier than her face!
More virgin than her lips I kissed!
When morn like God, with gold and grace
Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!
2.
Love, to your face farewell now,
Pillowed a flower on flowers;
Eyes, white-weighed with a spell now;
Lips, with nothing to tell now,
That bade adieu to ours.
Dear, is your soul so daggered
There by a world that hates?
Love--is _he_ ever laggard?
Hope--is _her_ face so haggard?
You, who are one with the Fates?
Never to wait to-morrow
Under such worldly skies!
Never to sleep with sorrow!
Hour by hour to borrow
Joy that has only sighs!
Sweet, farewell forever;
And a burning tear or two--
Will they reach your knowledge ever,
And touch through the dreams that sever
My life from the life of you?
O Life, in my flesh so fearful
Medicine me this pain!
Thy eyes with a science cheerful,
But mine, with a mystery tearful,
Tearful and slumber-fain.
Love, to your lips farewell now--
Your spirit through them I kiss;
Lips--so sealed with a spell now!
Lips, with nothing to tell now
But this! but this! but this!...
3.
So long it seems since last I saw her face,
So long ago it seems,
Like some sad soul, in unconjectured space,
Lost in the happiness of some dead grace
Remembered--I. And, oh! a little while
The sorrow stabs and Death conceals no smile
From Love bowed weeping in a thorny place--
So long ago, our love is what are dreams!
Since she is gone no more I feel the light,
Since she is gone beyond,
Burst like a revelation out of night,--
Golden convictions of far futures bright,--
Whiles clouds around the west take marble tones;
For Hope sits sighing in a place of stones,
Dark locks dishevelled and face very white,--
Since she is gone and life's an iron bond.
Now she is dead the doubt Love dulled with awe,
Now she is dead to me,
Questions the wisdom of diviner law.
Self-solved of self I search to find a flaw--
O egotism of Earth's fools and slaves!--
For Faith leans thoughtful in a place of graves,
On that unseen from this seen known to draw,
Now she is dead and it is hard to see.
4.
Ridged and bleak the gray forsaken
Twilight at the night has guessed,
Where no star of dusk has taken
Flame unshaken in the west.
All the day the woodlands dying
Moaned, and drippings as of grief
Tossed from barren boughs with sighing
Death of flying twig and leaf.
Ah, to be a dream unbroken,
Past the ironies of Fate!
Born a tree; with branches oaken
Dear unspoken intimate.
Who may say that man has never
Lived the mighty hearts of trees?
Graduating Godward ever,
The Forever finds through these?
Colors, we have lived, are cherished;
Odors, we have been, are ours;
Entity alone has perished;
Beauty-nourished souls were flowers.
Music, when the fancy guesses,
Lifts us loftier thoughts among;
Spirit that the flesh distresses,
But expresses self with song....
Heaven in darkness bends upbraiding
Without moonlight, without star;
Darkness and the reason aiding,
All but fading phantoms are.
Still philosophy is saying:
"Now that hope with life seems gone,
Some are cursing, some are praying,
God smiles raying in the dawn!"
5.
Wild weather; the whip of the sleet
On the shuttered casement tapping;
A shadow from face to feet,
Like a shroud, my spirit wrapping,
Wild weather; and how is she
Now the sting of the storm beats serried,
Over the stone and the tree
Of the grave where she is buried?
Wild weather; I cannot weep--
But the skies weep on and worry;
So I sleep, and dream in my sleep
How I hear dim garments hurry....
Star weather and footsteps of stars;
And I see white raiment glisten,
Like the glow on the face of Mars
When the stars to the angels listen.
And with me I see how she stands
With lips high thought has weighted;
With testifying hands,
And eyes with purity mated.
Have I spoken and have I kneeled
To the prayer I worship, I wonder?--
What waits on her lips that are sealed?
God-sealed and who shall sunder!
I sob, "Oh your stay was long!
You are come, but your feet were laggard,
With mansuetude and song
For a heart your death has daggered."
And I lift wet eyes to her
Unutterable with weeping,
And beg for the loves that were,
Now passed into Heaven's keeping....
I wake and a clock tolls three--
And the night and the storm lie serried
On the testament that's she,
Closed, clasped, and forever buried.
6.
The night is shrewd with storm and sleet;
Each loose-warped casement raps or groans;
I hear the wailing woodland beat
The tempest with long blatant moans,
Like one who fears defeat.
And sitting here beyond the storm,
Alone within the lonely house,
It seems of Sleep the Fairy charm
Weaves incantations; even the mouse
That scratched has come to harm.
And in this grave light, stolen o'er
Familiar objects, grown severe,
I 'm strange--as, opening a door,
One finds one's dead self standing near,
One knew not dead before.
The old stair rings with growling gusts;
Each hearth's flue gasps a gorgon throat
That snores and sleeps; the spectral dusts,
Which yonder Shawnee war-gear coat,
Whose quiver hangs and rusts,
Are shaken; till I feel that he,
Who wore it in the wild war-dance,
And died in it, fills shadowy
Its wampumed skins; its plume, perchance,
Shakes, scowling eyes at me.
And so the Swedenborge I toss
Aside, contented with the dark
That takes me. O'er the fire-light cross;
Pass where the andirons spit and spark,
And ponder o'er her loss.
Or from the flaw-splashed window yearn
Out toward the waste, where sway and dip
Dank, dark December boughs, where burn
Some late last leaves, that icy drip
No matter where you turn.
Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
Fills oozy footprints; and the night
So ugly that it mocks at God,
Creating monsters which the sight
Fancies, unseen, abroad.
The months I count: how long it seems
Since that bland summer when with her,
There on her porch, in rainy gleams
We watched the mellow lightning stir
In rain-clouds gray as dreams!
When all the west a torn gold sheet--
Swift openings of some Titan's forge--
Laid bald with storm; in quivering heat
Pitched precipice and nightmare gorge,
Where thunder torrents beat.
And strong the wind was as again
Storm lit the instant earth; and how
The wood sprang out one virent stain;
We read no more--lost is it now!--
In _Romance of a Reign_;
A tale of nowhere; then that we
Were reading till we heard the plunge
Of distant thunder sullenly,
And left to mark long lightnings lunge
Convulsions fiery.
What worlds love wrought us, dreaming there,
Of sorcery and necromance!
With spirits lustrous of the air,
A land like one great pearl, a trance
Of floods and forests fair.
Where white-faced flowers sang and thought;
Where fragrant birds flew, brilliant-blown,
In winging odors; feather-fraught
With light, where breathing colors shone,
On throbbing music brought.
Or built us some snug country home
Among the hills; with terraces
Vine-hung and orchared o'er the foam
Of the Ohio, far one sees
Wind crimson in the gloam.
And this! and this!--alone! alone!
To hear the sweep of winter rain,
The missiled sleet's sharp arrows blown;
Dark shadow on the freezing pane,
And on my heart a moan!
DAYS AND DREAMS.
He dreamed of hills so deep with woods
Storm-barriers on the summer sky
Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods
Down rocks of sullen dye.
Flat ways were his where sparsely grew
Gnarled, iron-colored oaks, with rifts,
Between dead boughs, of Eden-blue:
Ways where the speedwell lifts
Its shy appeal, and spreading far--
The gold, the fallen gold of dawn
Staining each blossom's balanced star--
Hollows of cowslips wan.
Where 'round the feet the lady-smock
And pearl-pale lady-slipper creep;
White butterflies upon them rock
Or seal-brown suck and sleep.
At eve the west shoots crooked fire
Athwart a half-moon leaning low;
While one white, arrowy star throbs higher
In curdled honey-glow.
Was it some elfin euphrasy
That purged his spirit so that there
Blue harebells, by those ways that be,
Seemed summoning to prayer?
For all the death within him prays;
Not he--his higher self, whose love
Fire-filled the flesh. Its light still stays
Touched by the soul above.
They found him dead his songs beside,
Six stairs above the din and dust
Of life: and that for which he died
Denied him even a crust.
DEITY.
No personal; a God divinely crowned
With gold and raised upon a golden throne
Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods
Man this or that--and little more than man!
And shalt thou see Him individual?
Not till the freed intelligence hath sought
Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love,
Piercing the singing cycles under God,--
Their iridescent evolutions orbed
In wild prismatic splendors,--shall it see--
Through God-propinquity become a god--
See, lightening out of spheric harmonies,
Resplendencies of empyrean light,
Prisms and facets of ten million beams
Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays,
And in this--eyes of burning sapphire, eyes
Deep as the music of the beautiful;
And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows,
As they were lilies of seraphic fire;
Lips underneath, of trembling ruby--lips
Whose tongue's a chord, and every sound a song:
Cherubic faces of intensity
In multiplying myriads to a word
Forming the unit--God; Supremity
Creative and ubiquitous.
From this
Thy intellect, detached, expelled and breathed
Exaltant into flesh endowed with soul,
One sparkle of the Essence clothed with clay.--
O high development! devolvings up
From matter to unmattered potencies,
Up to the source and fountain of all mind,
Beauty and truth, inviolable Love,
And so resumed and reabsorbed in God,
One more expression of eternity!
SELF.
A Sufi debauchee of dreams
Spake this:--From Sodomite to Peri
Earth tablets us; we live and are
Man's own long commentary.
Is one begat in Bassora,
One lies in Damietta dying--
The plausibilities of God
All possibles o'erlying.
But burns the lust within the flesh?--
Hell's but a homily to Heaven,--
Put then the individual first,
And of thyself be shriven.
Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it;
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.
Be that it is and thou art all;
And what thou art so thou hast written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.
SELF AND SOUL.
It came to me in my sleep,
And I rose from my sleep and went
Out in the night to weep,
Over the bristling bent.
With my soul, it seemed, I stood
Alone in a moaning wood.
And my soul said, gazing at me,
"Shall I show you another land
Than other this flesh can see?"
And took into hers my hand.--
We passed from the wood to a heath
As starved as the ribs of Death.
Three skeleton trees we pass,
Bare bones on an iron moor,
Where every leaf and the grass
Was a thorn and a thistle hoar.
And my soul said, looking on me,
"_The past of your life you see._"
And a swine-herd passed with his swine,
Deformed; and I heard him growl;
Two eyes of a sottish shine
Leered under two brows as foul.
And my soul said, "_This is the lust_
_That soils my limbs with the dust._"
And a goose wife hobbled by
On a crutch, with the devil's geese;
A-mumbling how life is a lie,
And cursing my soul without cease.
And my soul said, "_This is desire;_
_The meaning of life is higher._"
And we came to a garden, close
To a hollow of graves and tombs;
A garden as red as a rose
Hung over of obscene glooms;
The heart of each rose was a spark
That smouldered or splintered the dark.
And I was aware of a girl
With a wild-rose face, who came
With a mouth like a shell's split pearl,
Rose-clad in a robe of flame;
And she plucked the roses and gave,
And my flesh was her veriest slave.
She vanished. My lips would have kissed
The flowers she gave me with sighs,
But they writhed in my hands and hissed,
In their hearts were a serpent's eyes.
And my soul said, "_Pleasure is she;_
_The joys of the flesh you see_."
And I bowed with a heart too weary,
That longed for rest, for sleep;
And my eyes were heavy and teary,
And yearned for a way to weep.
And my soul smiled, "_This may be!_
_Will you know me and follow me?_"
THE DREAM OF DREAD.
I have lain for an hour or twain
Awake, and the tempest is beating
On the roof, and the sleet on the pane,
And the winds are three enemies meeting;
And I listen and hear it again,
My name, in the silence, repeating.
Then dumbness of death that must slay,
Till the midnight is burst like a bubble;
And out of the darkness a ray--
'T is she! the all beautiful double;
With a face like the breaking of day,
Eyes dark with the magic of trouble.
I move not; she lies with her lips
At mine; and I feel she is drawing
My life from my heart to their tips,
My heart where the horror is gnawing;
My life in a thousand slow sips,
My flesh with her sorcery awing.
She binds me with merciless eyes;
She drinks of my blood, and I hear it
Drain up with a shudder and rise
To the lips, like the serpent's, that steer it
And she lies and she laughs as she lies,
Saying, "Lo, thy affinitized spirit!"
Then I hear--as if torturing swords
Had shivered and torments had grated
Hoarse iron deep under; and words
As of sins that howled out and awaited
A fiend who lashed into their hords,
And a demon who lacerated.
And I shriek and lie clammy and stark,
As the curse of a devil mounts higher,
Up--out of damnation and dark,
Up--a hobble of hoofs that is dire;
I feel that his mouth is a spark,
His features, of filth and of fire.
"To thy body's corruption, thy grave!
Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!"
And a blackness rolls down like a wave
With a clamor of tongues that are swollen--
And I feel that my flesh is the slave
Of a--vampire, diakka, eidolon?
DEATH IN LIFE.
Within my veins it beats
And burns within my brain;
For when the year is sad and sear
I dream the dream again.
Ah! over young am I
God knows! yet in this sleep
More pain and woe than women know
I know, and doubly deep!...
Seven towers of shaggy rock
Rise red to ragged skies,
Built in a marsh that, black and harsh,
To dead horizons lies.
Eternal sunset pours,
Around its warlock towers,
A glowing urn where garnets burn
With fire-dripping flowers.
O'er bat-like turrets high,
Stretched in a scarlet line,
The crimson cranes through rosy rains
Drop like a ruby wine.
Once in the banquet-hall
These scarlet storks are heard:--
I sit at board with men o' th' sword
And knights of noble word;
Cased all in silver mail;
But he, I love and fear,
In glittering gold beside me bold
Sits like a lover near.
Wild music echoes in
The hollow towers there;
Behind bright bars o' his visor, stars
Beam in his eyes and glare.
Wild music oozes from
Arched ceilings, caked with white
Groined pearl; and floors like mythic shores
That sing to seas of light.
Wild music and a feast,
And one's beloved near
In burning mail--why am I pale,
So pale with grief and fear?
Red heavens and slaughter-red
The marsh to west and east;
Seven slits of sky, seven casements high,
Flare on the blood-red feast.
Our torches tall are these,
Our revel torches seven,
That spill from gold soft splendors old--
The hour of night--eleven.
No word. The sparkle aches
In cups of diamond-spar,
That prism the light of ruddy white
In royal wines of war.
No word. Rich plate that rays,
Splashes of splitting fires,
Off beryl brims; while sobs and swims
Enchantment of lost lyres.
I lean to him I love,
And in the silence say:
"Would thy dear grace reveal thy face,
If love should crave and pray?"
Grave Silence, like a king,
At that strange feast is set;
Grave Silence still as the soul's will,
That rules the reason yet.
But when I speak, behold!
The charm is snapped, for low
Speaks out the mask o' his golden casque,
"At midnight be it so!"
And Silence waits severe,
Till one sonorous tower,
Owl-swarmed, that looms in glaring glooms,
Sounds slow the midnight hour.
Three strokes; the knights arise,
The palsy from them flung,
To meward mock like some hoarse rock
When wrecking waves give tongue.
Six strokes; and wailing out
The music hoots away;
The fiery glimmer of eve dies dimmer,
The red grows ghostly gray.
Nine strokes; and dropping mould
The crumbling hall is lead;
The plate is rust, the feast is dust,
The banqueters are dead.
Twelve strokes pound out and roll;
The huge walls writhe and shake
O'er hissing things with taloned wings--
Christ Jesus, let me wake!
Then rattling in the night
_His_ iron visor slips--
In rotting mail a death's-head pale
Kisses my loathing lips.
Two hell-fierce lusts its eyes,
Sharp-pointed like a knife,
That flaming seem to say, "_No dream!_
_No dream! the truth of Life!_"
THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS.
1.
This is the tale they tell,
Of an Hallowe'en;
This is the thing that befell
Me and the village Belle,
Beautiful Aimee Dean.
2.
Did I love her?--God and she,
They know and I!
And love was the life of me--
Whatever else may be,
Would God that I could die!
3.
That All-Saints' eve was dim;
The frost lay white
Under strange stars and a slim
Moon in the graveyard grim,
An Autumn ghost of light.
4.
They told her: "Go alone,
With never a word,
To the burial plot's unknown
Grave with the grayest stone,
When the clock on twelve is heard;
5.
"Three times around it pass,
With never a sound;
Each time a wisp of grass
And myrtle pluck, and pass
Out of the ghostly ground;
6.
"And the bridegroom that's to be
At smiling wait,
With a face like mist to see,
With graceful gallantry
Will bow you to the gate."
7.
She laughed at this, and so
Bespoke us how
To the burial place she'd go:--
And I was glad to know,
For I'd be there to bow.
8.
An acre from the farm
The homestead graves
Lay walled from sun and storm;
Old cedars of priestly form
Around like sentinel slaves.
9.
I loved, but never could say
Such words to her,
And waited from day to day,
Nursing the hope that lay
Under the doubts that were.--
10.
She passed 'neath the iron arch
Of the legended ground,
And the moon like a twisted torch
Burned over one lonesome larch;
She passed with never a sound.
11.
Three times had the circle traced,
Three times had bent
To the grave that the myrtle graced;
Three times, then softly faced
Homeward, and slowly went.
12.
Had the moonlight changed me so?
Or fear undone
Her stepping strange and slow?
Did she see and did not know?
Or loved she another one?
13.
Who knows?--She turned to flee
With a face so white
That it haunts and will haunt me;
The wind blew gustily,
The graveyard gate clanged tight.
14.
Did she think it me or--what,
Clutching her dress?
Her face so pinched that not
A star in a stormy spot
Shows half as much distress.
15.
Did I speak? did she answer aught?
O God! had I said
"Aimee, 't is I!" but naught!--
And the mist and the moon distraught
Stared with me on her--dead....
16.
This is the tale they tell
Of the Hallowe'en;
This is the thing that befell
Me and the village Belle,
Beautiful Aimee Dean.
MATER DOLOROSA.
The nuns sing, "_ora pro nobis_,"
The lancets glitter above;
And the beautiful Virgin whose robe is
Woven of infinite love,
Infinite love and sorrow,
Prays for them there on high;--
Who has most need of her prayers,--to-morrow
Shall tell them,--they or I?
Up in the hills together
We loved, where the world seemed true;
Our world of the whin and heather,
Our skies of a nearer blue,
A blue from which one borrows
A faith that helps one die--
O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrows,
None needs such more than I!
We lived, we loved unwedded--
Love's sin and its shame that slays!--
No ill of the year we dreaded,
No day of its coming days;
Its coming days, their many
Trials by morn and night,
And I know no land, not any,
Where love's lilies grow so white!
Was he false to me, my Mother!
Or I to him, my God!--
Who gave thee right, O brother!
To take God's right and rod!
God's rod of avenging morrows,
And the life here in my side!
O Mother, God's Mother of Sorrows,
For both I would have died!
By the wall of the Chantry kneeling,
I pray and the organ rings,
"_Gloria! gloria!_" pealing,
"_Sancta Maria_" sings!
They will find us dead to-morrow
By the wall of their nunnery,
O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrow!
His unborn babe and me.
THE OLD INN.
1.
Red-winding from the sleepy town,
One takes the lone, forgotten lane
Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown
Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain;
Light shivers sink the gleaming grain;
The cautious drip of higher leaves
The lower dips that drip again.--
Above the tangled tops it heaves
Its gables and its haunted eaves.
2.
One creeper, gnarled to bloomlessness,
O'er-forests all its eastern wall;
The sighing cedars rake and press
Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
While, where the sun beats, breaks a drawl
Of hiving wasps; one bushy bee,
Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
To hum into a crack.--To me
The shadows seem too scared to flee.
3.
Of ragged chimneys martins make
Huge pipes of music; twittering here
Build, breed, and roost.--My footfalls wake
Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
I'll meet my pale self coming near;
My phantom face as in a glass;
Or one men murdered, buried--where?
Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
With lips that seem to moan "Alas."
LAST DAYS.
Aye! heartbreak of the tattered hills,
And mourning of the raining sky!
Heartbreak and mourning, since God wills,
Are mine, and God knows why!
The brutal wind that herds the storm
In hail-big clouds that freeze along,
As this gray heart are doubly warm
With thrice the joy of song.
I held one dearer than each day
Of life God sets in limpid gold--
What thief hath stole that gem away
To leave me poor and old!
The heartbreak of the hills be mine,
Of trampled twig and mired leaf,
Of rain that sobs through thorn and pine
An unavailing grief!
The sorrow of the childless skies'
_Good-nights_, long said, yet never said,
As when I kissed my child's blue eyes
And lips ice-dumb and dead.
THE ROMANZA.
In a kingdom of mist and moonlight,
Or ever the world was known,
Past leagues of unsailed water,
There reigned a king with a daughter
That shone like a starry stone.
The day grew out o' the moonlight;
But never a day was there.
The king was wise as hoary,
And his daughter, like the glory
Of seven kingdoms, fair.
And the night dimmed over the moonlight,--
And ever the mist was gray,--
With slips of dull stars, bluer
Where the princess met her wooer,
A page like the month o' May.
In her eyes the mist, and the moonlight
In hair of a crumpled gold;
By day they wooed a-hawking,
A-hawking laughed, a-mocking
The good, white king and old.
On the sea the mist, and the moonlight
Poured pale to the lilies' tips;--
At eve, when the hawks were feeding,
In courts to the kennels leading,
He kissed her mouth and lips.
On towers the mist, and the moonlight
On a dead face staring up;--
His kingly couch was ready,
But and her hand was steady
Giving the poisoned cup.
MY ROMANCE.
If it so befalls that the midnight hovers
In mist no moonlight breaks,
The leagues of years my spirit covers,
And myself myself forsakes.
And I live in a land of stars and flowers,
White cliffs by a silver sea;
And the pearly points of her opal towers
From the mountains beckon me.
And I think that I know that I hear her calling
From a casement bathed with light--
The music of waters in waters falling
To palms from a rocky height.
And I feel that I think my love's awaited
By the romance of her charms;
That her feet are early and mine belated
In a world that chains my arms.
But I break my chains and the rest is easy--
In the shadow of the rose
Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy,
We meet and no one knows.
To dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses;
The world--it may live or die;
The world that forgets, the soul that misses
The life that has long gone by.
We speak old vows that have long been spoken,
And weep a long-gone woe,--
For you must know our hearts were broken
Hundreds of years ago.
THE EPIC.
"To arms!" the battle bugles blew.
The daughter of their Earl was she,
Lord of a thousand swords and true;
He but a squire of low degree.
The horns of war blew up to horse:
He kissed her mouth; her face was white;
"God grant they bear thee back no corse!"--
"God give I win my spurs to-night!"
Each watch-tower's blazing beacon scarred
A blood-blot in the wounded dark:
She heard knights gallop battleward,
And from the turret leaned to mark.
"My God, deliver me and mine!
My child! my God!" all night she prayed:
She saw the battle beacons shine;
She saw the battle beacons fade.
They brought him on a bier of spears.--
For him--the death-won spurs and name;
For her--the sting of secret tears,
And convent walls to hide her shame.
THE BLIND HARPER.
And thus it came my feet were led
To wizard walls that hairy hung
Old as their rock the moss made dead;
And, like a ditch of fire flung
Around it, uncouth flowers red
Thrust spur and fang and tongue.
And here I harped. Did dead men list?
Or was it hollow hinges gnarred
Huge, iron scorn in donjon-twist?
And when I thought a face sword-scarred
Would curse me, lo! a woman kissed
At me hands ringed and starred.
And so I sang; for she had leaned
Rare beauty to me, dark and tall;
I sang of Love, whose Court is queened
Of Alienor the virginal,
Nor saw how rolled on me a fiend
Wolf-eyeballs from the wall.
Oh, how I sang! until she laughed
Red lips that made lute harmony;
I sang of knights who fought and quaffed
To Love's own paragon, Marie--
Nor saw the suzerain whose shaft
Was bowed and bent on me.
And I had harped until she wept;
But when I sang of Ermengarde
Of Anjou,--where her Court is kept
By brave, by beauty, and by bard,--
She turned a raven there and swept
Me, like a fury, 'ward.
A bleeding beak had pierced my sight;
A crimson claw each cheek had lined;
One glimpse: wild walls of threatening night
Heaped raven battlements behind
A moat of blazing serpents bright--
And then I wandered blind.
ELPHIN.
The eve was a burning copper,
The night was a boundless black
Where wells of the lightning crumbled
And boiled with blazing rack,
When I came to the coal-black castle
With the wild rain on my back.
Thrice under its goblin towers,
Where the causey of rock was laid,
Thrice, there at its spider portal,
My scornful bugle brayed,
But never a warder questioned,--
An owl's was the answer made.
When the heaven above was blistered
One scald of blinding storm,
And the blackness clanged like a cavern
Of iron where demons swarm,
I rode in the court of the castle
With the shield upon my arm.
My sword unsheathed and certain
Of the visor of my casque,
My steel steps challenged the donjon
My gauntlet should unmask;
But never a knight or varlet
To stay or slay or ask.
My heels on the stone ground iron,
My fists on the bolts clashed steel;--
In the hall, the roar of the torrent,
In the turret, the thunder's peal;--
And I found her there in the turret
Alone by her spinning-wheel.
She spun the flax of a spindle,
And I wondered on her face;
She spun the flax of a spindle,
And I marvelled on her grace;
She spun the flax of a spindle,
And I watched a little space.
But nerves of my manhood weakened;
The heart in my breast was wax;
Myself but the hide of an image
Out-stuffed with the hards of flax:--
She spun and she smiled a-spinning
A spindle of blood-red flax.
She spun and she laughed a-spinning
The blood of my veins in a skein;
But I knew how the charm was mastered,
And snapped in the hissing vein;
So she wove but a fiery scorpion
That writhed from her hands again....
Fleeing in rain and in tempest,
Saw by the cataract's bed,--
Cancers of ulcerous fire,
Wounds of a bloody red,--
Its windows glare in the darkness
Eyes of a dragon's head.
PRE-ORDINATION.
She bewitched me in my childhood,
And the witch's charm is hidden--
Far beyond the wicked wildwood
I shall find it, I am bidden.
She commands me, she who bound me
With soft sorcery to follow;
In a golden snare who wound me
To her bosom's snowy hollow....
Comes a night-dark stallion sired
Of the wind; a mare his mother
Whom Thessalian madness fired,
And the hurricane his brother.
Then my soul delays no longer:
Though the night around is scowling,
Keenly mount him blacker, stronger
Than the tempest that is howling.
At our ears wild shadows whistle;
Brazen forks the lightning o'er us
Flames; and huge the thunder's missile
Bursts behind us, drags before us.
Over fire-scorched fields of stubble;
Iron forests dark with wonder;
Evil marshes black with trouble;
Nightmare torrents thundering under:
In the thorn that past us races,
Harelipped hags like crows are rocking;
Stunted oaks have dwarf-like faces
Gnarled that leer an impish mocking:
Rocks, in which the storm is hooting,
Thrust a humpbacked murder over;
Bristling heaths, dead thistles shooting,
Raven-haunted gibbets cover:
Each and all are passed, like water
Under-rolled into a cavern,
Till we see the Devil's daughter
Waiting at the Devil's tavern.
And we stay; I drain the beaker
In her hand; the draught is fire;
World-remembrances grow weaker,
And my spirit, one desire.
Course it! course it! Darkness passes
Like an uprolled banner tattered;
Walled before us mountain masses
Rise like centuries unscattered.
And the storm flies ragged. Slowly
Comes a moon of copper-color,
And the evil night grows holy,
Mists the wild ride growing duller.
In the round moon's angry scanning,
Demon-swift cross spider arches
Of the web-thick bridges spanning
Chasms of her kingdom's marches.
We have reached her kingdom, olden
As the sea that sighs its sadness;
Rocks and trees and sands are golden,
And the air a golden gladness.
Shapely ingots are the flowers,
And the waters, amber brightness;
Gold-bright, song-birds in the bowers
Sing with eyes of diamond whiteness.
And she meets me with a chalice
Like the Giamschid ruby burning,
And I drain it without malice,
To her towers of topaz turning.
Many hundred years forgetting
All that's earth: within her power
I possess her: naught regretting
Since each year is as an hour.
AT THE STILE.
Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,
Over the stile the stars a-winking;
He thought it was Mary--'t was Mary's sister--
And love hath a way of thinking.
"Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry."--
Over the stile the stars hang yellow.--
"Just to the spring, my sweetheart Harry."--
And love is a heartless fellow.
"Thou saidst me _yea_ when the frost did shower
Over the stile from stars a-shiver."--
"I say thee _nay_ now the cherry-trees flower,
And love is taker and giver."
"O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!"--
Over the stile the stars a-glister.
"To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart,
I never was aught save Mary's sister.
"Sweet Mary's sister and thou my Harry,
Her Harry and mine, but mine the weeping:
In a month or twain you two will marry--
And I in my grave be sleeping."
Alone among the meadows of millet,
Over the stile the stars pursuing,
Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it--
And love hath a way of doing.
THE ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER.
The times they had kissed and parted
That night were over a score;
Each time that the cavalier started,
Each time she would swear him o'er,
"Thou art going to Barcelona!--
To make Naxera thy bride!
Seduce the Lady Yoena!--
And thy lips have lied! have lied!
"I love thee! I love thee, thou knowest!
And thou shalt not give away
The love to my life thou owest;
And my heart commands thee stay!--
"I say thou hast lied and liest!--
For where is there war in the state?--
Thou goest, by Heaven the highest!
To choose thee a fairer mate.
"Wilt thou go to Barcelona
When thy queen in Toledo is?
To wait on the haughty Yoena,
When thou hast these lips to kiss?"
And they stood in the balcony over
The old Toledo square:
And weeping she took for her lover
A red rose out of her hair.
And they kissed farewell; and higher
The moon made amber the air:
And she drew for the traitor and liar
A stiletto out of her hair....
When the night-watch lounged through the quiet
With the stir of halberds and swords,
Not a bravo was there to defy it,
Not a gallant to brave with words.
One man, at the corner's turning,
Quite dead. And they stoop or stand--
In his heart a dagger burning,
And a red rose crushed in his hand.
AT THE CORREGIDOR'S.
To Don Odora says Donna De Vine:
"I yield to thy long endeavor!--
At my balcony be on the stroke of nine,
And, Signor, am thine forever!"
This beauty but once had the Don descried
As she quit the confessional; followed;
"What a foot for silk! a face for a bride--
Hem--!" the rest Odora swallowed.
And with vows as soft as his oaths were sweet
Her heart he barricaded;
And pressed this point with a present meet,
And that point serenaded.
What else could the enemy do but yield
To a handsome importuning!
A gallant blade with a lute for shield
All night at her lattice mooning!
"_Que es estrella!_ O lily of girls!
Here's that for thy fierce duenna:
A purse of pistoles and a rosary o' pearls
And gold as yellow as henna.
"She will drop from thy balcony's rail, my sweet!
My seraph! this silken ladder;
And then--sweet then!--my soul at thy feet
No lover of lovers gladder!"
And the end of it was!--But I will not say
How he won to the room of the lady:--
Ah! to love is life and to live is gay,
For the rest--a maravedi!
Now comes her betrothed from the wars, and he,
A Count of the Court Castilian,
A Don Diabolus, sword at knee,
And moustaches--uncivilian.
And his is a jealous love; and--for
He marks that this marriage makes sadder--
He watches, and sees a robber to her,
Or gallant, ascend a ladder.
So he pushes inquiry unto her room,
With his naked sword demanding--
An Alquazil with the face of Doom,
Sure of a stout withstanding.
And weapon to weapon they foined and fought;
Diabolus' thrusts were vicious;
Three thrusts to the floor Odora had brought,
A fourth was more malicious,
Through the offered bosom of Donna De Vine--
And this is the Count's condition ...
Was he right, was he wrong? the question is mine,
To judge--for the Inquisition.
THE PORTRAIT.
In some quaint Nuernberg _maler-atelier_
Uprummaged. When and where was never clear,
Nor yet how he obtained it. When, by whom
'T was painted--who shall say? itself a gloom
Resisting inquisition. I opine
It is a Duerer. Humph?--that touch, this line
Are not deniable; distinguished grace
In the pure oval of the noble face;
The color badly tarnished. Half in light
Extend it, so; incline; the exquisite
Expression leaps abruptly: piercing scorn,
Imperial beauty; icy, each a thorn
Of light--disdainful eyes and ... well! no use!
Effaced and but beheld, a sad abuse
Of patience. Often, vaguely visible,
The portrait fills each feature, making swell
The soul with hope: avoiding face and hair
Alive with lively warmth; astonished there
"Occult substantial!" you exult, when, ho!
You hold a blur; an undetermined glow
Dislimns a daub.--Restore?--ah, I have tried
Our best restorers, all! it has defied ...
Storied, mysterious, say, mayhap a ghost
Lives in the canvas; hers, some artist lost,
A duchess', haply. Her he worshipped; dared
Not tell he worshipped; from his window stared
Of Nuremburg one sunny morn when she
Passed paged to court. Her cold nobility
Loved, lived for like a purpose; seized and plied
A feverish brush--her face! despaired and died.
The narrow Judengasse; gables frown
Around a skinny usurer's, where brown
And dirty in a corner long it lay,
Heaped in a pile of riff-raff, such as--say,
Retables done in tempora and old
Panels by Wohlgemuth; stiff paintings cold
Of martyrs and apostles, names forgot;
Holbeins and Duerers, say, a haloed lot
Of praying saints, madonnas: such, perchance,
Mid wine-stained purples mothed; a whole romance
Of crucifixes, rosaries; inlaid
Arms Saracen-elaborate; a strayed
Niello of Byzantium; rich work
In bronze, of Florence; here a delicate dirk,
There holy patens.
So, my ancestor,
The first De Herancour, esteemed by far
This piece most precious, most desirable;
Purchased and brought to Paris. It looked well
In the dark panelling above the old
Hearth of his room. The head's religious gold,
The soft severity of the nun face,
Made of the room an apostolic place
Revered and feared.--
Like some lived scene I see
That Gothic room; its Flemish tapestry:
Embossed above the aged lintel, shield--
Deep Or-enthistled, in an Argent field
Three Sable mallets--arms De Herancour,
Carved with the torso of the crest that bore,
Outstretched, two mallets. Lozenge-paned, embayed,
Its slender casements; on a lectern laid,
A vellum volume of black-lettered text;
Near by a blinking taper--as if vexed
With silken gusts a nervous curtain sends,
Behind which, maybe, daggered Murder bends;--
Waxed floors of rosy oak, whereon the red
Torchlight of Medicean wrath is shed,
Down knightly corridors; a carven couch
Sword-slashed; dark velvets of the chairs that crouch,
It seems, with fright; clear-clashing near, more near,
The stir of searching steel.
What find they here?--
'T is St. Bartholomew's--a Huguenot
Dead in his chair?--dead! violently shot
With horror, eyes glued on a portrait there,
Coiling his neck one blood line, like a hair
Of finest fire; the portrait, like a fiend,--
Looking exalted visitation,--leaned
From its black panel; in its eyes a hate
Demonic; hair--a glowing auburn, late
A dim, enduring golden.
"Just one thread
Of the fierce hair around his throat," they said,
"Twisting a burning ray, he--staring-dead."
ISMAEL.
Ismael, the Sultan, in the Ramazan,
Girdled with guards and many a yataghan,
Pachas and amins, viziers wisdom-gray,
And holy marabouts, betook his way
Through Mekinez.--Written the angel's word,
Of Eden's Kauther, reads, "Slay! praying the Lord!
Pray! slaying the victims!" so the Sultan went,
The Cruel Sultan, with this good intent,
In white bournouse and sea-green caftan clad
First to the mosque. Long each muezzin had
Summoned the faithful unto prayer and let
The "Allah Akbar!" from each minaret,
Call to their thousand lamps of blazing gold.
Prostrated prayed the Sultan. On the old
Mosaics of the mosque--whose hollow steamed
With aloes-incense--lean ecstatics dreamed
On Allah and his Prophet, and how great
Is God, and how unstable man's estate.
Conviction on him, in this chanting low
Of Koran texts, the Caliph's passion so
Exalted rose,--lamps of religious awe,
Loud smitings of the everlasting law
On unbelievers,--trebly manifest
The Faith's anointed sword he feels confessed.
So from the mosque, whose arabesques above--
The marvellous work of Oriental love--
Seen with new splendors of Heaven's blue and gold,
Applauding all, he, as the gates are rolled
Ogival back to let the many forth,
Cries war to all the unbelieving North.
Soon have they passed the tight bazaar; along
Close, crooked streets, too narrow for the throng;
The place of owls and tombs; the merloned wall,
Camel and steed and ass. Projecting all
Its towering battlements, his palace gray,
Seraglios and courts, against the day
Lifts, vanishes. And now, soul-set on hate,
From Mekinez they pass the scolloped gate.
Two dozing beggars, baking each a sore,
Sprawl in the sun the city gate before;
A leprous cripple and a thief, whose eyes--
Burnt out with burning iron,--as supplies
The law for thieves,--two fly-thick wounds blood-raw,
Lifted shrill voices as they heard or saw;
Praised God, and flung into the dust each face
With words of "victory and Allah's grace
Attend our Caliph, Mouley-Ismael!
Even at the cost of ours his days be well!"
And grimly smiling as he grimly passed,
"While God most merciful, who is, shall last,--
Now by Es Sirat!--will a liar's word
And thief's prevail or prosper?--Pray the Lord!--
What! at your lives' cost?--my devout intent!
Even as 't is bidden let their necks be bent!
Though words be pious, evil at the soul
Naught is the prayer!--So let their prayer be whole.
Nay! give them gold; but when the sequins cease
From the slaves' hands, by these my Soudanese
They die!" he said; and even as he said
Rolled in the dust each writhing, withered head.
And frowning westward, as the day grew late,
Four bleeding heads stared from the city gate
'Neath this inscription, for the passer-by,
"There is no virtue but in God the High."
A PRE-EXISTENCE.
An intimation of some previous life,
Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined,
Of some uncertain sleep--or lived or dreamed
In some dead life--between a dusk and dawn;
From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,
Far off defined, his corselet and camail,
Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's
Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one
Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught
A cry before him and a wail behind,
Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings;
Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves.
And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
Housed near the Tagus--squalid and alone
Save for his slave, held dear--to beat and starve--
Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones
A visible hunger; famished with the fear,
Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him--I, who held
Him soul and self, more hated than his God,
Stood silent; fools had laughed; I saw my way.
War-time crops weapons; and the blade I bought
Was subtly pointed. For, I knew his ways:
The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems
And bags of doublas--oh, I knew his ways.
A shadow, woven in the hangings, hid
Till time said _now_; gaunt from the hangings stole
Behind him; humped and stooping so, his heart
Clove through the faded tunic, murrey-dyed;
Grinned exultation while the grim, slow blood
Drenched black and darkened round the oblong wound,
And his old face thinned grayer than morn's moon.
Rubies from Badakhshan in rose lights dripped
Slim tears of poppy-purple crystal; dull,
Red, ember-pregnant, carbuncles wherein
Fevered a captive crimson; bugles wan
Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds
With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains
Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts;
Fire-opals savage and mesmeric with
Voluptuous flame, long, sweet, and sensuous as
Soft eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed
With talismanic violet, from tombs,
Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans;
Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of
Golconda--This, a sandaled dervise bare
Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun,
Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon,
Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held
Of some wild tribe.... Bleached in the perishing waste
A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones,
A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull
One blazing eye--the diamond. At Aleppo
Bartered--a bauble for his desert love.--
Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem jolting gem,
Flashed, rutilating in the irised light,
A rain of splintered fire; and his head,
Long-haired, white-sunk among them.
Yet I took
All--though his eyes burned in them; though, meseemed,
Each several jewel glared a separate curse....
Well! dead men work us mischief from the grave.
Richer than all Castile and yet not dare
Drink but from cups of Roman murra, spar
Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold! spar sensitive
Of poison! I, no slave, yet all a slave
To fear a dead fool's malice!--Still, how else!
Feasting within the music of my halls,
While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes,
Diaphanous, more silken than those famed
Of loomed Amorgos or of classic Kos,
Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed,
Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolfsbane-slain!
BEHRAM AND EDDETMA.
Against each prince now she had held her own,
An easy victor for the seven years
O'er kings and sons of kings; Eddetma, she
Who, when much sought in marriage, hating men,
Espoused their ways to win beyond their worth
Through martial exercise and hero deeds:
She, who accomplished in all warlike arts,
Let cry through every kingdom of the kings:--
"Eddetma weds with none but him who proves
Himself her master in the push of arms,
Her suitor's foeman she. And he who fails,
So overcome of woman, woman-scorned,
Disarmed, dishonored, yet shall he depart,
Brow-bearing, forehead-stigmatized with fire,
'Behold, a freedman of Eddetma this.'
Let cry, and many princes put to shame,
Pretentious courtiers small in thew and thigh,
Proud-palanquined from principalities
Of Irak and of Hind and farther Sind.
Though she was queenly as that Empress of
The proud Amalekites, Tedmureh, and
More beautiful, yet she had held her own.
To Behram of the Territories, one
Son of a Persian monarch swaying kings,
Came bruit of her and her noised victories,
Her maiden beauty and her warrior strength;
Eastward he journeyed from his father's court,
With men and steeds and store of wealth and arms,
To the rich city where her father reigned,
Its seven citadels by Seven Seas.
And messengered the monarch with a gift
Of savage vessels wroughten out of gold,
Of foreign fabrics stiff with gems and gold.
Vizier-ambassadored the old king gave
His answer to the suitor:--"I, my son,
What grace have I above the grace of God?
What power is mine but a material?
What rule have I unto the substanceless?
Me, than the shadow of the Prophet's shade
Less, God invests with power but of man;
Man! and the right beyond man's right is God's;
His the dominion of the secret soul--
And His her soul! Now hath my daughter sworn,
By all her vestal soul, that none shall know
Her but her better in the listed field,
Determining spear and sword.--Grant Fate thy trust;
She hangs her hand upon to-morrow's joust,
A prize to win.--My greeting and farewell."
Informed Eddetma and the lists arose.
Armored and keen with a Chorasmian mace,
Davidean hauberk came she. Her the prince,
Harnessed in scaly gold Arabian, met;
So clanged the prologue of the battle. As
Closer it waxed, Prince Behram, who a while
Withheld his valor,--in that she he loved
Opposed him and beset him, woman whom
He had not scathed for the Chosroes' wealth,--
Beheld his madness; how he were undone
With shining shame unless he strove withal,
Whirled fiery sword and smote; the bassinet
Rushed from the haughty face that long had scorned
The wide world's vanquished royalty, and so
Rushed on his own defeat. For like unto
A moon gray clouds have caverned all the eve,
The thunder splits and, virgin triumph, there
She sails a silver aspect, vanquished so
Was Behram by his blow. A wavering strength
Swerved in its purpose; with no final stroke
Stunned stood he and surrendered; stared and stared,
All his strong life absorbed into her face,
All the wild warrior, arrowed by her eyes,
Tamed, and obedient to lip and look.
Then she on him, as condor on a kite,
Plunged pitiless and beautiful and fierce,
One trophy more to added victories;
Haled off his arms, amazement dazing him;
Seized steed and garb, confusion filling him;
And scoffed him forth brow-branded with his shame.
Dazzled, six days he sat, a staring trance;
But on the seventh, casting stupor off,
Rose, and the straitness of the case that held
Him as with manacles of knitted fire,
Considered, and decided on a way....
Once when Eddetma with a houri band
Of high-born damsels, under eunuch guard,
In the walled palace pleasaunce took her ease,
Under a myrrh-bush by a fountain side,
Where Afrits' nostrils snorted diamond rain
In scooped cornelian, one, a dim, hoar head,--
A patriarch mid gardener underlings,--
Bent spreading gems and priceless ornaments
Of jewelled amulets of hollow gold
Sweet with imprisoned ambergris and musk;
Symbolic stones in sorcerous carcanets,
Gem-talismans in cabalistic gold.
Whereon the princess marvelled and bade ask,
What did the elder with his riches there?
Who, questioned, mumbled in his bushy beard,
"To buy a wife withal"; whereat they laughed
As oafs when wisdom stumbles. Quoth a maid,
With orient midnight in her starry eyes,
And tropic music on her languid tongue,
"And what if I should wed with thee, O beard
Grayer than my great-grandfather's, what then?"
"One kiss, no more, and, child, thou wert divorced,"
He; and the humor took them till the birds,
That listened in the spice-tree and the plane,
Sang gayly of the gray-beard and his kiss.
Then quoth the princess, "Thou wilt wed with him
Ansada?" mirth in her two eyes' gazelles,
And gravity bird-nestled in her speech;
And took Ansada's hand and laid it in
The old man's staggering hand, and he unbent
Thin, wrinkled brows and on his staff arose,
Weighed with the weight of many heavy years,
And kissed her leaning on his shaking staff,
And heaped her bosom with an Amir's wealth,
And left them laughing at his foolish beard.
Now on the next day, as she took her ease
With her glad troop of girlhood,--maidens who
So many royal tulips seemed,--behold,
Bowed with white years, upon a flowery sward
The ancient with new jewelry and gems,
Wherefrom the sun coaxed wizard fires and lit
Glimmers in glowing green and pendent pearl,
Ultramarine and beaded, vivid rose;
And so they stood to wonder, and one asked
As yesternoon wherefore the father there
Displayed his Sheikh locks and the genie gems?
--"Another marriage and another kiss?--
What! doth the tomb-ripe court his youth again?
O aged, libertine in wish not deed!
O prodigal of wives as well as wealth!
Here stands thy damsel"; trilled the Peri-tall
Diarra with the raven in her hair,
Two lemon-flowers blowing in her cheeks,
And took the dotard's jewels with the kiss
In merry mockery.
Ere the morrow's dawn,
Bethought Eddetma: "Shall my handmaidens,
Teasing a gray-beard's whim to wrinkled smiles,
For withered kisses still divide his wealth?
While I stand idle, lose the caravan
Whose least is notable?--My right and mine--
Betide me what betides."...
And with the morn
Before the man,--for privily she came,
Stood habited as of her tire-maids
In humble raiment. Now the ancient saw
And knew her for the princess that she was,
And kindling gladness of the knowledge made
Two sparkling forges of his deep dark eyes
Beneath the ashes of his priestly brows.
Not timidly she came; but coy approach
Became the maiden of Eddetma's suite;
And humbly answered he, "All my old heart!"--
Responsive to her quavering request--
"The daughter of the king did give thee leave?
And thou wouldst well?--Then wed with me forth-right.
Thy hand, thy lips." So he arose and gave
Her of barbaric jewelry and gems,
And seized her hand and from her lips the kiss,
When from his age, behold, the dotage fell,
And from the man all palsied hoariness;
Victorious-eyed and amorous with youth,
A god in ardent capabilities
Resistless held her; and she, swooning, saw
Gloating the branded brow of Prince Behram.
THE KHALIF AND THE ARAB.
_A Transcript._
Among the tales, wherein it hath been told,
In golden letters in a book of gold,
Of Hatim Tai's hospitality,
Who, substanceless in death and shadowy,
Made men his guests upon that mountain top
Whereon his tomb grayed from a thistle crop;--
A tomb of rock where women hewn of stone,
Rude figures, spread dishevelled hair; whose moan
From dark to daybreak made the silence cry;
The camel drivers, being tented nigh,
"Ghouls or hyenas," shuddering would say
But only girls of granite find at day:--
And of that city, Sheddad son of Aad
Built mid the Sebaa sands.--A king who had
Dominion of the world and many kings.--
Builded in pride and power out of things
Unstable of the earth. For he had read
Of Paradise, and to his soul had said,
"Now in this life the like of Paradise
I 'll build me and the Prophet's may despise,
Knowing no need of that he promises."
So for this city taxed the lands and seas,
And Columned Irem, on a blinding height,
Blazed in the desert like a chrysolite;
The manner of its building, it is told,
Alternate bricks of silver and of gold:
How Sheddad with his women and his slaves,
His thousand viziers, armored troops as waves
Of ocean countless, God with awful flame--
Shot sheer in thunder on him--God, his shame
Confounded and abolished, ere his eyes
Had glimpsed bright follies of that Paradise;
Lay blotted to a wilderness the land
Accursed, and the city lost in sand:
Among such tales--who questions of their sooth?--
One is recorded of an Arab youth:
The Khalif Hisham ben Abdulmelik
Hunting one day, by some unwonted freak
Rode parted from his retinue and gave
Chase to an antelope. Without or slave,
Amir or vizier to a pasture place
Of sheep he came, where dark, in tattered grace,
Watched one, an Arab youth. And as it came
The antelope drew off, with mouth of flame
And tongue of fire to the youth he turned
Shouting, "Ho! fellow! in what school hast learned!
Seest not the buck escapes me? worthless one!
O desert dullard!"
Rising in the sun,
"O ignorant," he said, "of that just worth
Of those the worthy of our Muslim earth!
In that thou look'st upon me--what thou art!--
As one fit for contempt, thou lack'st no part
Of my disdain?--Allah! I would not own
A dog of thine for friend no other known--
Of speech a tyrant, manners of an ass!"
And flung him, rags and rage, into the grass.
Provoked, astonished, wrinkled angrily,
Hissed Hisham, "Slave! thou know'st me not I see!"
Calmly the youth, "Aye, verily I know,
O mannerless! thy tongue hath told me so,
Thy tongue commanding ere it spake me _peace_--
Soon art thou known, nor late may knowledge cease."
"O dog! I am thy Khalif! by a hair
Thy life hangs rav'ling."
"May it dangle there
Till thou art rotted!--Whiles, upon thy head
Misfortunes shower!--Of his dwelling place,
Allah, be thou forgetful!--What! his grace
Hisham ben Merwan, king of many words--
Few generosities!"...
A flash of swords
In drifts of dust and lo! the Khalif's troops
Surrounding ride. As when a merlin stoops
Some stranger quarry, prey that swims the wind,
Heron or eagle; kenning not its kind
There whence 'tis cast until it, towering, feels
An eagle's tearing talons, falling reels
In broken circles downward--so the youth,
An Arab fearless as the face of Truth
Of all that made him instant of his death,
Waited with eyes indifferent, equal breath.
The palace reached, "Bring in the prisoner
Before the Khalif," and he came as were
He in no wise concerned: unquestioning went
Chin bowed on breast, and on his feet a bent
Dark gaze of scornful freedom unafraid,
Till at the Khalif's throne his steps were staid;
And unsaluting, standing head held down,
An armed attendant blazed him with a frown,
"Dog of the Bedouins! thy eyes rot out!
Insulter! must the whole big world needs shout
'Commander of the Faithful,' so thou see?"
To him the Arab sneering, "Verily,
Packsaddle of an ass."
The Khalif's rage
Exceeded now, and, "By my realm and rage!
Arab, thy hour is come, thy very last;
Thy hope is vanished and thy life is past."
The shepherd answered, "Aye?--by Allah, then,
O Hisham, if my time be stretched again,
Unscissored of what Destiny ordain,
Little or great, thy words give little pain."
Then the chief Chamberlain, "O vilest one
Of all the Arabs! wilt thou not be done
Bandying thy baseness with the Ruler of
The Faithful?" spat upon his face. A scoff
Fiery made answer:
"There be some have heard
The nonsense of our God, the text absurd,
'One day each soul whatever shall be prompt
To bow before me and to give accompt.'"
Then wroth indeed was Hisham; hotly said,
"He braves us!--headsman, ho! his peevish head!
See; canst thou medicine its speech anew,
Doctor its multiplying words to few;
Divorce them well." So, where the Arab stood,
Bound him; made kneel upon the cloth of blood:
With curving sword the headsman leaned at pause,
And, even as 'tis custom made of laws,
To the descendant of the Prophet quoth,
"O Khalif, shall I strike?"
"By Iblis' oath!
Strike!" answered Hisham; but again the slave
Questioned; and yet again the Khalif gave
His nodded "yea"; and for the third time then
He asked--and knowing neither men nor Jinn
Might save him if the Khalif spake assent,
Signalled the sword, the youth with body bent
Laughed--till the wang-teeth of each jaw appeared,
Laughed--as with scorn the King of kings he 'd beard,
Insulting death. So, with redoubled spleen
Roared Hisham rising, "It is truly seen
That thou art mad who mockest Azrael!"
The Arab answered: "Listen!--Once befell,
Commander of the Faithful, that a hawk,
A hungry hawk, pounced on a sparrow-cock;
And winging nestward with his meal in claw,
To him the sparrow, for the creature saw
The hawk's conceit, addressed this slyly, 'Oh,
Most great, most royal, there is not, I know,
That in me which will stay thy stomach's stress,
I am too paltry for thy mightiness';
With which the hawk was pleased, and flattered so
In his self-praise, he let the sparrow go."
Then smiled the Khalif Hisham; and a sign
Staying the scimitar, that hung malign
A threatening crescent, said, "God bless, preserve
The Prophet whom all true believers serve!--
Now by my kinship to the Prophet, and
Had he at first but spake us thus this hand
Had ne'er been reckless, and instead of hate
He had had all--except the Khalifate."
Bade stuff his mouth with jewels and entreat
Him courteously, then from the palace beat.
THE END.