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Title: The Singing Caravan
A Sufi Tale
Author: Robert Vansittart
Release Date: July 7, 2015 [EBook #49385]
Language: English
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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
_FICTION_
THE GATES
JOHN STUART
_VERSE_
SONGS AND SATIRES
_THEATRE_
LES PARIAHS
THE CAP AND BELLS
PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES
CLASS
_THEATRE IN VERSE_
FOOLERY
DUSK
THE SINGING CARAVAN
_RECENT POETRY_
THE HEART OF PEACE
By LAURENCE HOUSMAN. 5s. net
ESCAPE AND FANTASY
By GEORGE ROSTREVOR. 3s. 6d. net
THE SAILING SHIPS
By ENID BAGNOLD. 5s. net
COUNTER-ATTACK
By SIEGFRIED SASSOON. 2s. 6d. net
POEMS
By GEOFFREY DEARMER. 2s. 6d. net
THE SINGING
CARAVAN
A SUFI TALE
BY
ROBERT VANSITTART
Each man is many as a caravan;
His straggling selves collect in tales like these.
Only the love of one can make him one.
Who takes the Sufi Way--the Way of Peace?
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1919
_Printed in Great Britain_
_IN MEMORIAM_
MY BROTHER ARNOLD
2ND LIEUTENANT, 11TH HUSSARS
KILLED IN ACTION NEAR YPRES
MAY 1915
_In twenty years of lands and seas and cities
I had small joy and sought for it the more,
Thinking: "If ever I am polymêtis,
'Tis yours to draw upon the hard-won store."_
_I had some bouts from Samarkand to Paris,
And took some falls 'twixt Sweden and Sudan.
If I was slow and patient learning parries,
I hoped to teach you when you were a man._
_I cannot fall to whining round the threshold
Where Death awaited you. I lack the skill
Of hands for ever working out a fresh hold
On life. In mystic ways I serve you still._
_The age of miracles is not yet ended.
As on the humble feast of Galilee
Surely a touch of heaven has descended
On the cheap earthen vessel, even on me,_
_Whose weak content--the soul I travail under--
Unstable as water, to myself untrue,
God's mercy makes an everlasting wonder,
Stronger than life or death, my love of you._
I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Humphreys, Mr. John Murray, and the
Editor of the _Spectator_ for kind permission to reproduce a few of
the shorter poems in this tale of Persian mystics. I have included
them, firstly, because I wished otherwise new work, being a memorial,
to include such fragments of the past as might be worth preserving;
secondly, because decreasing leisure inspires a diffidence in the
future that may justify me in asking a reader or a friend to judge or
remember me only by "Foolery" and "The Singing Caravan."
R. V.
CONTENTS
PAGE
IN MEMORIAM vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii
PRELUDE 1
I. THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN 9
II. THE JOY OF THE WORDS 15
III. THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT 17
IV. THE INWARDNESS OF THE MERCHANT 20
V. THE LESSON OF THE CAMEL 22
VI. THE BOASTING OF YOUTH 28
VII. THE HEART OF THE SLAVE 33
VIII. THE TALE OF THE CHEAPJACK 37
IX. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DOOR 39
X. THE SONG OF THE SELVES 49
XI. THE STORY OF THE SUTLER 57
XII. THE LEGEND OF THE PEASANT 62
XIII. THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER 66
XIV. THE MORAL OF THE SCHOLAR 78
XV. THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH 81
XVI. THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC 90
XVII. THE PRIDE OF THE TAILOR 100
XVIII. THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURER 103
XIX. FUSION 161
XX. LONG LEAVE 167
EPILOGUE 169
PRELUDE
The sun smote Elburz like a gong.
Slow down the mountain's molten face
Zigzagged the caravan of song.
Time was its slave and went its pace.
It bore a white Transcaspian Queen
Whose barque had touched at Enzelí.
Splendid in jewelled palanquin
She cleft Iran from sea to sea,
Bound for the Persian Gulf of Pearls,
Where demons sail for drifting isles
With bodyguards of dancing girls
And four tamed winds for music, smiles
For passports. Thus the caravan,
Singing from chief to _charvadar_,
Reached the great gate of screened Tehran.
The burrows of the dim bazaar
Swarmed thick to see the vision pass
On broidered camels like a fleet
Of swaying silence. One there was
Who joined the strangers in the street.
They called him Dreamer-of-the-Age,
The least of Allah's _Muslimeen_
Who knew the joys of pilgrimage
And wore the sign of sacred green,
A poet, poor and wistful-eyed.
Him all the beauty and the song
Drew by swift magic to her side,
And in a trance he went along
Past friends who questioned of his goal:
"The Brazen Cliffs? The Realms of Musk?
Goes he to Mecca for his soul?..."
The town-light dwindled in the dusk
Behind. Ahead Misr? El Katíf?
The moon far up a brine-green sky
Made Demavend a huge pale reef
Set in an ocean long gone dry.
Bleached mosques like dwarf cave-stalagmites,
Smooth silver-bouldered _biyaban_
And sevenfold velvet of white nights
Vied with the singing caravan
To make her pathway plain.
Then one
Beside the poet murmured low:
"I plod behind, sun after sun,
O master, whither do we go?
"Are we for some palmed port of Fars,
Or tombed Kerbela, or Baghdad
The Town-of-Knowledge-of-the-Stars?
Is worship wise or are we mad?"
Answered the poet: "Do we ask
Allah to buy each Friday's throng?
None to whom worship is a task
Should join the caravan of song.
"With heart and eyes unquestioning, friend,
We follow love from sea to sea,
And Love and Prayer have common end:
'May God be merciful to me!'"
So fared they, camped from noon to even,
Till dawn, quick-groping through the gloom,
Pounced on gilt planets low in heaven.
Thus they beheld the domes of Kum.
And onward nightly. Though the dust
Swirled in dread shapes of desert _Jinn_,
Ever the footsore poet's trust
Soared to the jewelled palanquin,
Parched, but still singing: "God, being great,
Lent me a star from sea to sea,
The drop in his hand-hollow, Fate.
He holds it high, and signs to me
"Although She--She may not ..."
"For thirst
My songs and dreams like mirage fail.
Yea, mad "--his fellow pilgrim cursed--
"I was. The Queen lifts not her veil."
"Put no conditions to her glance,
O happy desert, where the guide
Is Love's own self, Life's only chance ..."
He saw not where the other died,
But pressed on strongly, loth to halt
At Persia's pride, Rose-Ispahan,
Whose hawks are bathed in pure cobalt.
To meet the singing caravan
Came henna-bearded prince and sage
With henna-fingered _houris_, who
Strove to retard the pilgrimage,
Saying: "Our streets are fair and you
"A poet. Sing of us instead.
God may be good, but life is short.
Yon are the mountains of the dead.
Here are clean robes to wear at court."
He said: "I seek a bliss beyond
The range of your _muezzin_-call.
Do birds cease song till heaven respond?
The road is naught. The Hope is all."
"You know not this Transcaspian Queen,
Or what the journey's end may be.
Fool among Allah's _Muslimeen_,
You chase a myth from sea to sea."
"Because I bargain not nor guess
If Waste or Garden wait for me,
Love gives me inner loveliness.
I hold to her from sea to sea."
So he was gone, nor seemed to care
For beckoning shade, or boasting brook,
Or human alabaster-ware
Flaunted before him in the _suk_,
Nor paused at sunburnt far Shiraz,
The home of sinful yellow wine,
Where morning mists, like violet gauze,
Deck the bare hills, and blossoms twine
In seething coloured foam around
The lighthouse minarets.
And sheer--
A thin cascade bereft of sound--
The track falls down to dank Bushír.
The caravan slipped to the plain.
Its song rose through the rising damp,
Till, through the grey stockade of rain,
The Gulf of Pearls shone like a lamp.
Here waiting rode a giant _dhow_,
Each hand a captive _Roumi_ lord,
Who rose despite his chains to bow
As straight her beauty went aboard,
Sailed. For the Tableland of Rhyme?
The Crystal Archipelago?
Who knows! This happened on a time
Among the times of long ago.
He only, Dreamer-of-the-Age,
Was left alone upon the sands,
The goal of his long pilgrimage,
The soil of all the promised lands,
Watching the _dhow_ cut like a sword
The leaden waves. Yet, ere she sailed,
God poured on broken eyes reward
Out of Heaven's heart.
The Queen unveiled.
There for a space fulfilment shone,
While worship had his soul for priest
And altar. Then the light was gone,
And on the sea the singing ceased.
* * * * *
And is this all my story? Yes,
Save that the _Sufi's_ dream is true.
Dearest, in its deep lowliness
This tale is told of me and you.
O love of mine, while I have breath,
Whatever my last fate shall be,
I seek you, you alone, till death
With all my life--from sea to sea.
And God be merciful to me.
I
THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN
The pilgrims from the north
Beat on the southern gate
All eager to set forth,
In little mood to wait
While watchman Abdelal
Expounded the Koran
To that wise seneschal,
His mate, Ghaffír Sultan.
At length Ghaffír: "Enough!"
Even watchmen's heads may nod.
"Asräil is not rough
If we have faith in God."
His fellow tapped the book:
The _Darawish_ discuss
The point you overlook:
Has Allah faith in us?
Know, then, that Allah, fresh
And splendid as a boy
Who thinks no ill of flesh,
Had one desire: a toy.
And so he took for site
To build his perfect plan
The Earth, where His delight
Was manufactured: Man.
Ah, had we ever seen
The draft, our Maker's spit,
I think we must have been
Drawn to live up to it.
God was so pure and kind
He showed Shaitan the lease
Of earth that He had signed
For us, His masterpiece.
The pilgrims cried: "You flout
Our calm. Beware. It flags.
Unbar and let us out,
Sons of a thousand rags."
And Abdelal said: "Hark!
Methought I heard a din."
Said Ghaffír: "After dark
I let no devils in.
"Proceed." He sucked his pipe:
God in His happiest mood
Laid down our prototype,
And saw that man was good.
Aglow with generous pride:
"Shaitan the son of Jann,
This is my crown," He cried.
"Bow down and worship man."
Said Evil with a smirk--
He was too sly to hiss--
"I cannot praise your work.
I could have bettered this."
God said: "I could have sown
The soil my puppet delves,
Yet rather gave my own
Power to perfect themselves."
Still the fiend stiffened. "I
Bow not." Our prophet saith
That he would not comply
Because he had no faith
In us. He only saw
The worst of Allah's toy,
The springs, some surface flaw,
The strengthening alloy.
Said God: "The faults are mine.
I gave him hope and doubt,
The mind that my design
Shall have to work Me out.
What though he fall! Is love
So faint that I should grieve?
How else, friend, should I prove
To him that I believe?
"And how else should he rise?
Lo, I, that made the night,
Have given his conscience eyes
Therein to find the Right.
I have stretched out his hand,
Oh, not to grasp but feel,
Have taught his aims to land,
But tipped the aims with steel;
"Have given him iron resolve
And one great master-key,
Courage, to bid revolve
The hinge of destiny,
And beams from heaven to build
The road to Otherwise,
With broken gloom to gild
The causeway of his sighs
"Whereby I watch him come
At last to judge of Me,
Beyond the thunder's drum,
The cymbals of the sea.
Aye, Shaitan, plumb the Space
And Time that planets buoy,
And you shall know the place
Appointed for my toy.
"I could not give him rest,
And see him satiate
At once, or make the zest
Of life an opiate.
I might have been his lord,
I had not been his friend
To sheathe his spirit's sword
And start him at the end.
"I would not make him old,
That he might see his port
Fling its nocturne of gold
And cheerfulness athwart
The dusk. I planned the wave,
And wealth of wind and star.
Could one be gay and brave
Who never saw afar
"The cause that he outlives
Only because he fought,
The peaks to which he strives,
The ranges of his thought,
Until the dawn to be
Relieve his watchfires dim,
Not by his faith in Me
But by my faith in him!
"I also have my dreams,
And through my darkest cloud
His climbing phalanx gleams
To my salute, and, proud
Of him even in defeat,
My light upon his brow,
My roughness at his feet,
I triumph. Shaitan, bow!"
But Shaitan like an ass
Jibbed and would not give ear.
Just so it came to pass,
Declares our Book, Ghaffír.
We know that in the heat
Of disputation--well,
Allah shot out his feet,
And Shaitan went to hell.
Thus Abdelal. The gate
Shook to the pilgrims' cry:
"When will you cease to prate,
Beards of calamity!"
The poet: "Allah's bliss
Fall on his watchmen! Thus
Our journey's password is
That God has faith in us."
II
THE JOY OF THE WORDS
The Sufis trembled: "Open, open wide,
Dismiss us to illuminate the East."
Old Ghaffír fumbled the reluctant bolts,
Lifting his hands and eyes as for a feast.
And this was their viaticum. His words
Were mingled with their eagerness like yeast:
Go forth, poor words!
If truly you are free,
Simple, direct, you shall be winged like birds,
Voiced like the sea.
Walk humbly clad!
Be sure those words are lame
That ride a-clatter, or that deck and pad
A puny frame.
As in your dress,
So in your speech be plain!
Be not deceived; the Mighty Meaningless
Are loud in vain.
Be not puffed up,
Nor drunk with your own sound!
Shall men drink deeply when an empty cup
Is handed round?
Shout not at heaven!
Say what I bade you say.
Simplicity is beauty dwelling even
In yea or nay.
Be this your goal.
Beauty within man's reach
Is poetry. You cannot touch man's soul
Save with man's speech.
Therefore go straight.
You shall not turn aside
To vain display; for yonder lies the gate
Where gods abide
Your coming. Go!
The way was never hard.
What would you more than common flowers or snow?
For your reward,
Be understood,
And thus shall you be sung.
Aye, you who think to show us any good,
Speak in our tongue.
III
THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT
The watchman finished, as the southern gate
Clanged, and the breathless city lay behind.
The Dreamer's shadows shrank against the wall,
As though the desert called and none replied,
Till the young pilot, standing out to night,
Swung clear these lines to sound the depths of her:
"Blue Persian night,
Soft, voiceless as the summer sea!
Flooding the bouldered desert sand, submerge
This cypressed isle
And Demavend's snow-spire--a sunken rock
On your hushed floor, where I the diver stand
Beyond the reach of day.
And though, up through your overwhelming peace,
I see your surface, heaven,
I would not rise there, being drowned in you,
Blue Persian night.
"Blue Persian night,
O consolation of the East!
In your clear breathless oceanic sheen
My heart's an isle,
From whose innumerable caves and coigns--
When dusk awakes the city of my mind--
Exploring boats set forth,
Bound for the harbour-lights of God knows where,
Full, full of God knows what;
It must be love of Him, or Her, or You,
Blue Persian night."
Her signal answered; for a slender wand
Of moonbeam touched the Dreamer on the mouth.
The caravan looked upward with a shout
And set its camels rolling to the south,
Murmuring: "Blue Persian night, none ever saw
You through your own sheer purity before us.
Rise up our songs as bubbles from the sand ..."
Somewhere among the camels rose this chorus:
Dong! Dong!
Lurching along
Out of the dusk
Into the night.
Noiseless and lusty,
Dreamy and dusty,
Looms the long caravan-line into sight.
Dong! Dong!
Never a song,
Never a footfall
A breath or a sigh.
Ghostly and stolid,
Stately and squalid,
Creeps the monotonous caravan by.
Dong! Dong!
Fugitive throng.
Out of the dark
Into the night,
Silent and lonely,
Gone!... the bells only
Tells us a caravan once was in sight.
IV
THE INWARDNESS OF THE MERCHANT
Moussa, the son of the Crypto-Jew,
Had eaten his fill of yellow stew
And a bit besides (as a business man
He was far too quick for the caravan,
Who loved him not, though it feared his guile).
Moussa then: "I shall walk awhile
"To ease my soul of its heavy load."
His pious friends: "May you find a road,"
And winked. "His soul has begun to feel
There's nothing left but a march to steal."
But one from the village, decoying quail
For the governor's pot, came back with a tale
Of a lean arm shaken against the sky
Like a stunted thorn, and this piteous cry:
"As sound within an ice-bound desert mewed
Drags out existence at the very core
Of isolation, as breakers slip ashore
In vainly eternal whispers to the nude
Reef-coral, where no human feet intrude
Upon the purity of stillness; or
As, far from life, unmated eagles soar
Above the hilltops' breathless solitude,
"So moves my love, like these a thing apart,
Fierce, in the ruined temple of my heart,
Shy as a shooting star that peers new-risen
Mid strangers. Even so. Pent in the prison
Of space my soul, a lonely planet, wheels ...
Men call the sum of loneliness 'Ideals.'"
This is the plaint that the cross-road heard
Where it strikes from Kashan to Burujird.
The townsmen, met by the sun-dried stream,
Caught a voice high up like an angel's scream
Or a teaspoon tapping the bowl of heaven,
And they cried: "_Ajab!_ May we be forgiven,
"But it sounds a soul of the rarer sort
Whose wings are set for no earthly port."
And the answer came, as they cried: "Who's that?"
"One that sells short weight in mutton fat."
V
THE LESSON OF THE CAMEL
Light was not. All was still. The caravan
Had ceased its song and motion by the bed
Wherein the hill-stream tosses sleeplessly,
The only sound, save one staccato note
Interminably piped by tiny owls.
The camp lay balmed in slumber, as the dead
Are straitened in white trappings. Then a voice,
Deeper than any dead black mountain pool
Or blacker well where devils cool by day,
Seemed to commune with Dreamer-of-the-Age,
Who, peering through the cloak about his head,
Challenged: "Who speaks?" The voice replied: "A friend
Unknown to you." ... It was old Peacock Tous,
The great grey camel with the crimson tail
On whom the queen was wont to ride. He said:
"Sheikh, I was born among the Bakhtiari,
The shelter of their hawthorn vales was mine;
For me, unbroken to the loads men carry,
The breeze that crowns their uplands glowed as wine
To drink. I, Tous, the Peacock, whom men call so
Because I ever moved as one above
The common herd, was mad and merry. Also
I knew not yet the prickled herb of Love.
"Spring tricked the desert out with flowered patterns
For me to tread like flowered carpets wrought
In patience by my master's painted slatterns--
He said that only Persian _women_ fought.
Ah, youth is free and silken-haired and leggy!
No camel knows why Allah makes it end,
But He is wiser. Me the tribe's Il-Beggi
Spied out and sent as tribute to a friend,
"A dweller in black tents, a nomad chieftain
Of Khamseh Arabs or unruled Kashgai,
Whose cattle-raids and rapines past belief stain
The furthest page of camel-history.
And shamefully the ragged sutlers thwacked us,
Until I learned, as to this manner born,
That pride must find a mother in the cactus
And hope the milk of kindness in the thorn.
"O Sheikh, I found. A milk-white _nakeh_ followed
The drove of males, and I would lag behind
With her, no matter how the drivers holloa'ed--
Man never doubts that all but he are blind.
At nightfall, when our champing echoed surly
Beyond the cheerful circle of the fire,
Something within me whispered, and thus early
I bore the burden of the world's desire.
"But I was saddled with the will of Allah,
Since one there was more fleet of foot than I,
The chosen of the chief of the Mehallah,
Whose nostrils quivered as he passed me by.
To her, beside his paces and his frothing,
My steadfastness was common as the air,
My passion and my patience were as nothing,
Because fate chose to make my rival fair.
"I suffered and was silent--some said lazy--
Until the seasons drove us to the plain.
The nomads sold me then to a Shirazi.
I never met my happiness again,
But trod the same old measure back and forward,
And passed a friend as seldom as a tree.
Oh, heaviness of ever going shoreward,
Of bringing all fruition to the sea!
"For I have fared from sea to sea like you, sirs,
And with your like, not once but many times.
Your path acclaims me eldest of its users,
It tells my step as I foresee your rhymes.
I know by heart a heartache's thousandth chapter
As you have read the preface of delight.
The silence you shall enter, I have mapped her.
O singing caravan, I was To-night
"Long ere you dreamed. I dreaming of my lady
Became the cargo-bearer we call Self.
Two hundredweight of flesh that spouted Sa'di,
A restless bag of bones intent on pelf,
Have straddled me in turn.... Hashish and spices,
Wheat, poisons, satins, brass, and graven stone,
I, Tous, have borne all human needs and vices
As solemnly as had they been my own.
"Moon-faced sultanas blue with kohl a-pillion,
Grey ambergris, pink damask-roses' oil,
Deep murex purple, beards or lips vermilion
As Abu Musa's flaming scarlet soil
I have borne--and dung and lacquer. I have flooded
Bazaars with poppy-seed and filigree.
Men little guess the stuff that I have studied,
Or what their vaunted traffic seems to me.
"I am hardened to all wonderments and stories--
My ears have borne the hardest of my task--
I have carried pearls from Lingah up to Tauris,
And Russian Jews from Lenkoran to Jask.
I have watched fat vessels crammed by sweating coolies
With all the rubbish that the rich devise,
And often I have wondered who the fool is
That takes it all, and whom the fool supplies.
"Yet ran my thoughts on her, though cedar rafters
Were laid on me, or mottled silk and plush,
Although the tinkling scales of varied laughters
Rode me from Bandar Abbas to Barfrush,
Or broken hearts from Astara to Gwetter.
All ironies have made their moving house
Of me. I smile to think how many a letter
Has passed from loved to lover thanks to Tous
"The loveless. Think you men alone are lonely,
My masters? I have also worshipped one,
Have built my days of faith and service only,
And while I worshipped all my life was gone.
I spent the funds of life in growing older,
In heaping fuel on a smothered fire.
See how my tale is rounded! On my shoulder
I bear the burden of _your_ world's desire.
"Yet keep that inner smile; and never show it
Though the Account be nothing--shorn of her.
Be wise, O Sheikh. Pray God to be a poet
Lest life should make you a philosopher,
Or lest the dreams of which you had the making
Should prove to be such stuff as still I trail,
And bring your heart, my withers, nigh to breaking
When at the last the Bearer eyes the Bale,
"As you shall penetrate this day or morrow
The miracle of willing servitude,
And yet believe therein. It is the sorrow
And not the love that asks to be subdued;
It is the mirage not the truth that trammels
The travelling feet. Ah, if men only knew
How their brief frenzies move the mirth of camels,
Our rests were longer and our journeys few.
"Old Tous is up. The camp is struck and ready
For fresh emprise. Dawn sifts the clay-blue sky
For gold. Now see how dominant and steady
I prose along that have no mind to fly.
This is my lesson: over sand or shingle,
Blow hot, blow cold, by mountain, plain and khor,
Coming and going, I must set a-jingle
My own deep bell.... And you must ask for more!"
He ceased. White on the mirror of the air
His breath made patterns. In a ruined farm
Red cocks blared out and shouted down the owls.
The drivers rubbed their eyes. Another day
Among the days was starting on its march....
Above the pilgrims fallen to their prayers
Old Tous stood upright, blinking at the sun.
VI
THE BOASTING OF YOUTH
The soldier-lad from Kerman,
The sailor-lad from Jask
Knew naught that should deter man
From finishing the cask.
"Wine sets the Faithful jibbing
Like mules before an inn,
But we sit bravely bibbing,
And hold our own with sin."
Said the stout-hearted wonder
Of Jask: "Wine frights not me.
I fear no foe but thunder
And winds that sting the sea."
"And I," said he of Kerman,
"Fear nothing but the night,
Or some imperious _firman_
That bids the Faithful fight."
"They say some lads fear ladies
And truckle to them." "Who
Could be so weak? The _Cadis_
Rise up for me and you."
"But doctors, nay and princes,
Have troubles of their own,
Save those whom fire convinces....
I leave the stuff alone."
"And I...." Then both bethought them
That, howso strong and wise,
Their principles had caught them
On this mad enterprise.
"'Tis time to act with daring,
And rest," said he of Jask,
And swore a mighty swearing,
(And drained another flask).
"If I go on, attendant
Upon this woman's way,
May I become dependant
On your arrears of pay!"
"If I," said Captain Kerman,
"Should knuckle to my mate,
May I become a merman
And live on maggot-bait!"
"Then since we have discovered
That women need our strength"--
(The tavern-houris hovered)
"To hold them at arm's length,
Sit down in this rest-house, and
Tell me a tale among
The tales, one in your thousand!"
This was the story sung:
"I threw my love about you like fine raiment;
I let you kill my pride.
You passed me by, but smiled at me in payment,
And I was satisfied.
"I made my mind a plaything for your leisure,
Content to be ignored.
Body and soul I waited on your pleasure,
Waited--without reward.
"I have no faint repinings that we met, dear,
Or that I left you cold.
I rub my hands. You will be colder yet, dear,
Some day when you are old."
"Forbidden wine is mellow.
The sun has set. Of whom
Sing you this song, Brave Fellow?
Night is the ante-room
Breeze-sprinkled to keep cooler
The feasting-halls behind."
"She might have been my ruler
But for my _Strength of Mind_."
"That was the tune to whistle!
How have I longed to learn
The deeds of men of gristle
Like mine!..." "Tell me in turn
Some of your lore of women,
Whose wiles are deep as _bhang_.
Your strength shall teach to swim men
Who fall in love...." He sang:
"You came to me, and well you chose your quarry.
You told your tale, and well you played your rôle.
You spoke of suffering, and I was sorry
With all my heart, with all my soul.
'Out of the deep,' you said. I thought to save you,
And stunned myself upon the covered shoal.
Yet, poor deceptive shallows, I forgave you
With all my heart, with all my soul.
You sought whatever evil had not sought you.
In vain I strove to make your nature whole.
I did not know the market that had bought you
With all your heart, with all your soul.
If man had one pure impulse you would smudge it.
You had one gift, my pity, which you stole.
Now I will only tell you that I grudge it
With all my heart, with all my soul."
"Of whom this song, Brave Fellow?
The stars in heaven's black soil
Fold up their petalled yellow
That pays the angels' toil."
The lamp had burned its wick dim,
The pair had drunk their fill....
"I might have been her victim
But for my _Strength of Will_."
Then one said to the other:
"Such strength as yours and mine
Must put its foot down, brother,
And stay here--pass the wine--
Till, for the world's salvation,
Shall radiate from this den
The Great Confederation
Of Independent Men."
* * * * *
The last sour mule was saddled,
On went the caravan.
These twain turned on the raddled
Handmaidens of the _han_,
Blinked, cast them forth with loathing
Because the queen was fair,
And lest their lack of clothing
Should lay man's weakness bare.
White as a cloud in summer,
Slender as sun-shot rain--
Earth knows what moods become her--
The queen passed....
In her train
The Great Confederation
Trod with such wealth of _Will_
That, in its trepidation,
It never paid its bill.
VII
THE HEART OF THE SLAVE
But as they fared slave Obeidullah failed.
Devouring fever shook him like a rat,
And ere they reached Kashan his course was run.
Then freedom came towards him, and he spoke:
"Here is an eye of water, mulberry-trees,
A rest-house, and to me a stranger thing,
Rest. Caravan be strong, fare on with blessings
Whence you must forge your happiness--but I,
Possessed of peace, shall never see the end.
The heart within me has been fire so long
That now my body is smoke. I watch it drift
Life leaves me gently as a mistress goes
Before her time to meet the uncoloured days,
Saying: 'I have lived. Plead not. 'Twill be in vain.
You were the end of summer. I have passed
Out of the garden with fresh scents and dews
Upon me, out ere sunset with cool hands,
The supple tread of youth and glorying limbs
Firm as resolve, unblemished as my pride;
Passed ere a leaf be fallen, or losing fights
Begin, that smirch the memory of love....'
Sweet is the shade, and death's cool lips are welcome
After the burning kisses of the sun,
The strained embraces of my owner, Toil.
I shall remember her with gratitude
But no regret, as I lie here. The dawn
Biting the desert-edge shall not disturb me,
Nor green oases zigzagged through the heat
Like stepping-stones. The many-coloured hills,
Heaven's mutable emotions, these are past.
Beyond them I shall find security
Of tenure in the outstretched hands of God."
Thereat his fellows made lament, and urged:
"Sleep on and take your rest, but not for ever.
Time adds to strength, and you shall rise with us
Who wait. Already we foresee the coast.
A little while...." Slave Obeidullah raised
Himself and looked ahead with shining eyes:
"The moon is faint. A dust-cloud swirls.
Therein I see dim marching hosts:
Strange embassies and dancing girls,
Spice-caravans and pilgrims. Ghosts
Rise thick from this else fruitless plain,
A waste that every season chars.
Yet teeming centuries lie slain
And trodden in the road to Fars.
"The still, white, creeping road slips on,
Marked by the bones of man and beast.
What comeliness and might have gone
To pad the highway of the East!
Long dynasties of fallen rose,
The glories of a thousand wars,
A million lovers' hearts compose
The dust upon the road to Fars.
"No tears have ever served to hold
This shifting velvet, fathom-deep,
Though vain and ceaseless winds have rolled
Its pile wherein the ages sleep.
Between your fingers you may sift
Kings, poets, priests and _charvadars_.
Heaven knows how many make a drift
Of dust upon the road to Fars.
"The wraiths subside. And, One with All,
Soon, in the brevity of length,
Our lives shall hear the voiceless call
That builds this earth of love and strength.
Eternal, breathless, we shall wait,
Till, last of all the Avatars,
God finds us in his first estate:
The dust upon the road to Fars."
So still he lay, so still the pilgrims deemed
He was no longer there. The deepening shade
Covered him softly. With his latest breath
Slave Obeidullah looked upon the Queen:
"You whom I loved so steadfastly,
If all the blest should ask to see
The cause for which my spirit came
Among them with so little claim
To peace, this book should speak for me.
"I strove and only asked in fee
Hope of your immortality
Not mine--I had no other aim
You whom I loved.
"The Judge will bend to hear my plea,
And take my songs upon his knee.
Perhaps His hand will make the lame
Worthy to worship you, the same
As here they vainly tried to be,
You whom I loved."
Then, turned towards her, Obeidullah slept.
VIII
THE TALE OF THE CHEAPJACK
Among the fruit-trees still he slumbers. All
Mourned for their brother with one heavy heart.
Even Tous drooped, swaying weakly in his stride;
Until Farid Bahadur, cheapjack, spoke,
One bootlessly afoot whose years had brought
For profit this, to see existence clear
And empty as a solid ball of glass.
Erstwhile, he said, my peddling carried me
Clean through two empires like a paper hoop,
Setting me down upon the olive slopes
Where Smyrna nestles back to mother earth,
And so lures in the ocean. I filled my pack
With kerchiefs, beads, dross, chaffering with a Greek,
Although he vowed a much-loved partner's death
Left him no heart for it. He blew his nose,
Asking strange prices as a man distraught.
I had no heart to bargain while he crooned:
"Our loves were woven of one splendid thread,
But not our lives, though we had been, we twain,
Linked as in worship at the Spartan fane
Of him who brought his brother from the dead.
Ah, would our God were like his gods that said:
Such love as this shall not have flowered in vain,
And let the younger Castor live again
The space that Pollux lay with Death instead.
Dear, I had lain so gladly in the grave
Not for a part of time but for God's whole
Eternity, had died, yea oft, to save
Not half your life, but one short hour. Your soul
Was all too pure; mine had no right to ask
From heaven such mercy as a saviour's task.
"They say the Olympian grace was not content
With housing Death, but giving Love the key.
It set the troths that guided you and me
Among the jewels of the firmament;
And there they dwell for ever and assent
To each propitious ploughing of the sea.
The coasting-pilots of Infinity
Well know The Brothers. So your sails were bent,
Young fathomer of the blue. I linger here
With following gaze that tugs my heart-strings taut
All day; but every night an Argonaut
Slips through the streets and darkness, seaward, far
Beyond the limitations of his sphere
Into the vacant place beside a star."
So crooned he desolate in his dim shop,
Till I became all ears and had no eyes.
The fellow cheated me of three _dinars_.
IX
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DOOR
Slow into Kum the Glaring trailed
The caravan. Its courage failed
A moment. Only dust-clouds veiled
The sun, that overhead
From fields The Plough had turned to grain,
Star-honey laden on The Wain
And spices from the wind-domain,
Was baking angel-bread.
(Astronomers in Baghdad say
That Allah gave the Milky Way
To feed his guests, the dead.)
Even as the dead the pilgrims lay
Until the sun received his pay--
Man counts in gold, but he in grey--
Then, whining as one daft,
A voice crept to each sleeper's ear,
And one by one sat up to hear
It soughing like a Seistan mere
Where nothing ever laughed.
A blur at elbow on the floor
Cried: "Sleep! 'Tis but the tavern door
Amoaning in the draught."
"Ay," said the master of the inn,
"A black-faced gaper that lets in
The dark, my creditors, and kin!
Last month it strained my wrist, did
The lout, so hard it slams. This week
Claims it for fuel. See the leak
Of air it springs! Its hinges creak,
Its wood is warped and twisted.
'Tis heavy-hearted as a man,
Stark, crazy thing!... It feels uncann...."
The wheezing voice persisted.
"Earth bare me in Mazanderan,
Where, breaking her dead level plan,
Steep foliage opens like a fan
To hide her virgin blush;
And singing, caravan, like you
Brooks dance towards the Caspian blue
Past coolth wherein mauve turtles coo
To panthers in the rush,
That turn hill-pools to amethyst.
Here bucks drink deep and tigers tryst
Neck-deep in grasses lush.
"And there the stainless peaks are kissed
By heaven whose crowning mercy, mist,
With cloud-lands white as Allah's fist
Anoints their heads with rain.
We never dreamed, where nature pours,
That life could run as thin as yours--
A waif thirst-stricken to all fours--
Or verdure, but a vein
In sandscapes wincing from the sun
That burns your flesh and visions dun,
Crawl throbbing through the plain.
"I grew. My shadow weighed a ton;
I held a countless garrison;
My boughs were roads for apes to run
Around the white owl's niche.
The hum of bees, the blue jay's scream....
The forest came to love and teem
In me beside the vivid stream
Shot through with speckled fish;
Till, weary of my sheltered glen,
I craved a human denizen
Fate granted me my wish.
"Yea, I had longed (if slope and fen
Can love like this, the love of men
Must live above our nature's ken)
To see and shade the room,
To shield far-leaning the abode,
Wherein the souls of lovers glowed
To songs that dimmed the bulbul's ode ...
And man became my doom.
He dragged me through the dew-drenched brake,
And took the heart of me to make
A tavern-door at Kum."
The pilgrims sat erect, engrossed,
Or searched the crannies for a ghost.
"Ah, heed it not," implored the host;
"This hell-burnt father's son
Moans ever like a soul oppressed,
And takes the fancy of a guest,
And makes my house no house of rest:
I would its voice were gone.
Yet be indulgent, sirs! 'Tis old.
Next week it shall be burnt or sold.
A new--" The voice went on:
"Here have I stood while life unrolled
But not the tale my breezes told.
Moonlight alone conceals the cold
Drab city's lack of heart.
Here have I watched an hundred years
Bespatter me with blood and tears,
Yet leave man ever in arrears
Of where my monkeys start.
No more, dog-rose and meadow-sweet!
The harlot's musk and rotten meat
Blow at me from the mart.
"No more, clear streams and fairy feet!
But through my mouth the striving street
Drains in brown spate the men who eat
And drink and curse and die;
And out of me the whole night long
Reel revellers--O God, their song!...
Are there no mortals clean and strong,
Or do they pass me by?
I little thought that I should leave
For this the groves where turtles grieve
Far closer to the sky.
"Instead of every song-bird's note
I know the scales a merchant's throat
Can compass. I have learned by rote
The tricks of Copt and Jew;
Can tell if Lur or Afghan brawls,
The Armenian way of selling shawls
Softly, and how an Arab bawls
To rouse the raider's crew,
Lest ululating strings of slaves
Should take the kennel for their graves....
Raids! I have seen a few,
"Or wars, occasion dubs them--waves
Of Mongol sultans, Kurdish braves.
They--Find me words! the Simûn _raves_--
They worked ... 'tis called their will,
Battered me in--behold the dint--
With all their hearts that felt like flint,
Besmeared the city with the tint
Of sunset on my hill.
My leopards stalk my bucks at eve--
I shivered as I heard them heave--
At least they ate their kill.
"I followed that.... But men who weave
Such flowing robes of make-believe,
I think the flood was wept by Eve--
Some sportsman shot the dove--
These puzzled me, for God is good
And man His image--not of wood,
Thank God!--At last I understood
All ... all except their love.
I grew so hard that I could trace
His hand's chief glory in their race.
Perhaps He wore a glove."
Then one without made haste to smite
The malcontent. It opened. Night
Stood on the threshold dressed in white,
And myriad-eyed and blind.
The ostler murmured: "Some _Afrit_
Or bitter worm has entered it;
Nor jamb nor lintel seems to fit.
I know its frame of mind."
"Air stirs the dust upon the floor,"
The landlord cried. "Fool! Shut that door
Amoaning in the wind."
"My glade was deep, a lichened well
Of ether, limpid as a bell
Buoyed on the manifold ground-swell
Whose distance changed attires
As sun-stroked plush, a roundelay
Of all red-blue and purple grey,
And, at each rise and fall of day,
Snows dyed like altar fires
Licked through those loud green sheaves of copse,
Bent hyphens 'twixt the mountain-tops,
Mosques of my motley choirs.
"And I, who gave them bed and bower
For nights enduring but an hour
Mid blaring miles of trumpet-flower,
Leagues of liana-wreath,
I saw the rocks through leaves and lings,
Could blink the fangs and feel the wings,
Thrill with the elemental things
Of life and love and death.
The purity of air and brook
And song helped me to overlook
The rapine underneath.
"But you--no! one dream more: an elf,
Askip on ochre mountain-shelf,
Who once had seen a man himself.
I used his wand to gauge
The sheen of moths and peacocks' whir,
To plumb the jungle-aisles, to stir
The drifts of frankincense and myrrh,
And amorous lithe shapes that purr....
'Tis finished. Turn the page
To where man cased his bones in fat.
His mate moved like a tiger-cat
Until he built her cage.
"You, I have watched you all who sat
Successive round the food-stained mat,
And reckoned many who lived for that
Alone; have seen the mark
Of that last state the Thinking Beast
Peep through the foliage of the feast,
And crown its poet's flight with greased
Fingers that grope the dark;
Have heard a cleanlier bosom catch
Her breath, and fumble with my latch
Irresolute. The lark
"My inmates never feared to match
Bespoke the end. I belched the batch,
Rolling them down the street, a patch
Of dirt against the dawn.
Then in its stead there came a saint,
Inventor of a soul-complaint,
Who gave men's faith a coat of paint
Like mine, and made me yawn
With furtive wenching. Here have sighed
Exultant groom and weeping bride
Led like a captive fawn.
"This way passed those who marry lean
Girl-chattels ere their times of teen.
I knew a like but milder scene:
A hawk, small birds that cower.
How soon the chosen was brought back dead--
Poisoned, the _hakim_ always said--
The husband groaned beside the bed,
Arose, and kept the dower,
But swept his conscience out with prayer.
Man took the angels unaware
When he became a power.
"And what of woman? On my stair
The merchants spread their gaudiest ware,
For which fools bought a love affair
That ended in a jerk.
Enough! To round the _tamasha_
A bloated thing came by, the Shah;
It grinned, and viziers fawned 'Ha! ha!'
Curs, brainless as a Turk.
And all the women in his train
Beheld him once and ne'er again,
And called his love their work.
"You see, my friends, I tired of this
Wild doubling in the chase of bliss.
Pards miss their spring as men their kiss,
And yet the quarry dies.
I learned the world's least mortal god,
Whose epitaph is Ichabod,
May sport till noon, but if he nod
Shall never more arise.
Then, caravan, you passed, and I
Have solved my riddle with a cry:
The sad are never wise.
"Your song was all that I had heard
In dreams beyond the wildest bird,
That rose above my yellow-furred
Basses that bell and roar.
It took the heart of me in tow
To heights that I had longed to know,
To the great deeps where lovers go
And find--and want--no shore.
In these alone is man fulfilled;
And gleaming in the air I build
My hope of him once more.
"For all the few that see truth whole,
And take its endlessness for goal,
And steer by stars as if no shoal
Could mar their firmament,
For all the few that sing and sail
Knowing their quest of small avail,
Thank God who gave them strength to fail
In finding what He meant...."
"Poets!" the landlord groaned, "and poor!
This house is cursed." He banged the door
Behind them as they went.
And distance placed soft hands upon their mouths.
X
THE SONG OF THE SELVES
DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE
'Twas in old Tehran City,
Hard by the old bazaar,
I heard a restless ditty
That pushed my door ajar;
A song nor great nor witty,
It spoke of my own mind.
I looked on Tehran City,
And knew I had been blind,
Or else the streets were altered
As by a peri's wand.
"Who are you, friends?" I faltered.
"The Pilgrims of Beyond,"
They said. I kissed the tatters
That wiser heads contemn.
I saw the Thing-that-matters,
And took the road with them.
I seek. Bestow no pity
On Failure's courtier. Say:
"'Twas well to find the city,
But that was yesterday."
THE PILGRIMS
Athirst as the Hadramut,
Our spirits correspond
With God by all the gamut
Of harmony, too fond
Of Him for prayer that rifles
His treasury for trifles.
No load of blessing stifles
The Pilgrims of Beyond.
DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE
And yet the empty-handed
Hold richer merchandise
Than ever fable landed
From Dreamland's argosies,
Since we, the symbol-merchants,
Are partners with Bulbul.
The silversmith of her chants
Knows how our chests are full.
In marts, where echoes answer
And only they, we trade.
But join our caravan, sir,
And count your fortune made.
Dawn brings us dazzling offers
With fingers gemmed and pearled,
And evening fills our coffers
As we explain the world,
Green fields and seas that curtsey
To us and mock Despair;
For blossoms in the dirt see
Their spirit in the air.
And Ecstasy our servant
Demands no other wage
But that we be observant
To joy in pilgrimage.
THE MERCHANTS
We do not bid our master
Declare His word His bond,
Or make His payments faster--
As though He would abscond!
We ask Him for too little
To strain at jot or tittle.
We know our lives are brittle,
We Pilgrims of Beyond.
DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE
We come from everlasting
Towards eternity,
Ho! not in dirge and fasting
But lapped in jollity.
Though sackcloth be our clothing
We bear no ash but fire.
We have no sickly loathing
Of youth and youth's desire.
We prize no consummation
Of one peculiar creed.
We travel for a nation,
The one that feels our need.
Our tongue conceals no message,
But leaves you free to find,
And vaunts itself the presage
Of those that come behind.
THE CAMELMEN
Here is no patch of shade. A
Fierce wilderness and blonde
Links Delhi to Hodeidah,
Tashkent to Trebizond.
The cargo is our brother's,
We march and moil for others,
Until the desert smothers
The Pilgrims of Beyond.
DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE
Hark how our camels grumble
At morn! Would you permit
The stone on which you stumble
To make you carry it?
And if at last your burden
Be cheapened in a shop,
Seraglio or Lur den,
Should lack of humour stop
The game at its beginning?
We lug the stuff of dreams.
Earth does her best by spinning,
She cannot help the seams;
But you can help to monger
The broidery. She may
Have made you richer, stronger,
To give her best away.
I own no musk or camphor,
I have no truck with care,
Nor change the thing I am for
The things men only wear.
THE SOLDIERS
First cousin of a sieve is
The uniform we donned.
We slop along on _ghivehs_,
In rags caparisonned.
No Shah has ever paid us.
All brigands mock and raid us,
And misery has made us
The Pilgrims of Beyond.
DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE
What then! Would you be willing
To quit the caravan,
And fall again to drilling,
Pent in the walled _meidan_,
When history flings open
Blank scrolls for you to write
Such victories as no pen
Has ever brought to light?
You shall not burn as Jengiz,
Nor rage like Timur Lang.
Your foemen are _ferengis_
Of whom no epic sang.
The housed that blame the tented,
Or comfort those that think,
The flocks that die contented
With settling down to blink
The sun we keep our eyes on,
That bow their heads too far
To face their own horizon,
On these be war on war.
Cursed by the bonds you sever,
The bondsmen you release,
Go, seek the Land of Fever
And find the Land of Ease.
THE CARAVAN
Lift up your hearts, ye singers!
We lift them up in song.
Behold, the sunset lingers.
No less shall night be long.
We meet her unaffrighted,
Though never bourne be sighted.
We _meant_ to be benighted
Still moving fleet and strong.
We smooth the stony places
For those that else despond.
We pass, and leave no traces
Save this, a broken frond,
And this, that hands once craven
Take hardship for the haven
Upon whose rocks is graven:
"The Pilgrims of Beyond."
XI
THE STORY OF THE SUTLER
And so the song was finished. Then they called
To Kizzil Bash, the Sutler of Dilman,
"Take up the tale, for you have wandered far
Behind strange masters...." Once, he said, I served
One of the Roumi lordlings, silver-faced,
Who to forget some sorrow or lost love--
Such is their way--came with an embassage
To cringe before the Caliph in Stamboul
For something sordid, trade.... He mouthed our verse
To please his guests, and I corrected him.
The man was cypress-sad and lone, but he
Could not be silent as the great should be,
Because he neither knew his place nor me.
The boatman marvelled at his lack of dignity.
They knew the currents. He was bent on steering,
And spoke of God in terms wellnigh endearing.
I see him still, sharp beard, black velvet mantle, ear-ring.
He dug with slaves for Greekling manuscript,
Danced like a slave-girl when he found, and shipped
Westward cracked heads and friezes we had chipped.
I saw him kiss a statue, murmuring eager-lipped:
"Fear was born when the woods were young.
Chance had gathered an heap of sods,
Where the slip of a tree-man's tongue
Throned the dam of the elder gods.
Twilight, a rustled leaf,
Started the first belief
In some unearthly Chief
Latent behind
Cover of aspen shade.
Skirting the haunted glade
Some one found speech, and prayed.
Was it the wind
Sniffing his cavern or the demon's laughter?
Here from the night he conjured up Hereafter,
Quarried the river-mists to house the unseen.
Only the woodpecker had found life hollow,
And gods went whither none was fain to follow,
Because the earth was green
And Afterwards was black.
"Man, the child of a tale of rape,
Drew the seas with his hunting ships,
Cut their prows to a giant's shape,
Fitted names to their snarling lips:
Gods in his image born,
Singing, fierce-eyed, unshorn,
Lords of a drinking-horn
Five fathoms deep;
Holding the one reward
Carved by a dripping sword,
Feasts, and above them stored
Ceiling-high sleep.
Save to the conqueror Life was put-off Dying,
And Death brought nothing but the irk of lying--
How long--with over-restful hosts abed.
The rough immortals, whom he met unshrinking,
Spared him from nothing but the pain of thinking.
And so the earth was red
While Afterwards was grey.
"Jungles thinned, and the clearings merged
Where the wandering clans drew breath.
Druids rose and the people surged.
Then the blessing of Nazareth
Fell on them mad and mild,
Boasting itself a child.
Smite it! And yet it smiled.
There, as it kneeled,
Lowliness rose to might,
Deeming our days a night,
Bodily joy a plight
Soon to be healed;
Gave to one god all credit for creation,
But, lest the Path should seem the Destination,
Strove to attune man's heartstrings to a rack,
Until the soul was fortified to change hells,
While saints and poets chanted songs of angels,
Confessing earth was black
But Afterwards was gold.
"Faith was raised to the power of millions,
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.
"I sought a cave whence madmen hunt wild sheep,
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.
Ah, brazen, were your heart as strong as looked your square-chinned
ramparts.... Long
We waited at the gates in dust knee-deep. The Emperor did not trust
The help that he had craved. He swore he had not asked so many ...
more
Would ruin him.... He let the heat suck out our strength at every
pore.
But we were told great noblemen, Godfrey of Bouillon in Ardennes,
Robert of Flanders, "Sword and Lance of Christians," all the flower
of France
Were on our side, Hugh Vermandois, Stephen of Chartres and Troyes
and Blois,
Baldwin and Raymond of Toulouse. The preacher said we could not
lose.
Moreover he had spoken with angel-reserves behind us, sith
They sent assurance (Saracens we mocked, but had our own _Hadith_)
That we should root the heathen out, and blight as with a ten
years' drought
Their fields. Jehovah willed that we should leave no seed of theirs
to sprout.
Our mates streamed in from lands beyond the Adriatic, Bohemond
With Tancred; strait Dalmatian bays, Epirus, Scodra, devious ways
Bore them with boastful tales of sport and plunder, and a vague
report
That this was nothing to the spoil that beckoned from the Moslem
court.
Henceforth impatient ups and downs possessed us. Asiatic towns
Flamed to the general vision. We heard less perhaps of heavenly
crowns
Than flowers and peacocks made of gems, the Caliph's crusted
diadems
That crushed the head like Guthlac's bell, and trees with solid
emerald stems.
And I confess Christ counted less to us than tales of leash and
gess,
Or Hárún-el-Rashíd's largesse that sent the clock to Charlemagne.
We practised sums, and tried to train our cavalry in loss and gain.
Upon the misty wizard-world rose like a star the money-brain.
Even monks planned theft of saintly scalps; stray hairs and chips
of nail and chine,
Divinely shielded through the Alps, would make the fortune of the
Rhine.
I often tried to hide myself from this besetting spook of pelf.
In olive-groves I called in vain to simple faun and acorn-elf.
I pictured kine that kissed their own reflections on the impulsive
Rhone,
A little maid with sunflower hair, a nest we found ... the birds
had flown.
I think Alexius was wise to keep us out. Our hungry eyes
Fixed on his capital. Why go farther when here were rich supplies?
The Pope that cursed our tastes had laid the hand of blessing on
this raid.
Blest chance indeed--as though a man should drink his fill and then
be paid!
Each set to whet his falchion-pet that only friends had tasted yet.
We dressed our hopes in purple silk, wallowed in dreamland's wine
and milk.
Yet more than any Sultan's spoil fair women should repay our toil.
Already some were filled with thoughts that our red cross was meant
to foil.
The notion twinged us. We compared our prospects with the way we
fared
On these lean suburbs and the flats about Barbyses. We were snared!
The very Greeks, whose prayers had lured us into this adventure,
lodged
Their saviours in a baited trap. Lord, how these foxes turned and
dodged.
There lay our army like a log; our camp, our tenets, turned to bog.
We sank. Disorder brought disease that stalked us spectral through
the fog.
The Greeks we came to bolster up against their weakness filled our
cup
With turpitude; the Byzantine put Circe's poison in our wine.
Our aspirations all became mean as our hosts; the inner flame
Went out. From many a starting-point we found a common ground in
shame;
For here no soul can keep its health, but cat-like honour creeps by
stealth
Down side streets where the children breathe an atmosphere of
rotting wealth.
Between our fellow-churches rose the hate that heaven had meant for
foes....
The infidel might well have laughed. Perhaps he did. We came to
blows.
And I was sad that Christians had nothing in common, saving bad
Blood, that our highest dizziest heads could all divide but none
could add.
But when spring lit the Judas-trees our chieftains kissed the
Emperor's knees.
We crossed to Asia sick at heart. Alexius kept us well apart,
Shuffling us o'er the Bosphorus. The number and the rank of us
Exceeded those who went to Troy for Helen the Adulterous.
On the Bithynian plain our force drew up: an hundred thousand horse
With foot and monks and womankind in crowds that none can call to
mind.
Fear stuffed the empty space ahead with devils and the shapes of
dread
That decked our church. A ghastly rush of loneliness made every
head
Feel like a pinpoint. Discontent ran through the score of nations
blent
In cries. Their ribald spokesman forced a drunkard's way to
Godfrey's tent:
_You that have led us through the many tests
Of Hungary, King Caloman, and Thrace,
Who think of kingdoms as of palimpsests
And human nature as a carapace,
Go up and prosper in your lofty chase!
We cannot live on barren mountain-crests.
Our wildest dreams are prisoners that pace
The little space between a woman's breasts._
_Here lies the stronghold that our zeal invests,
This infidel alone we long to face.
This hollow, where our constant fancy nests,
Is more to us than pedestal and dais.
Nay, we will go no farther in the race
For gain, respond no more to mean behests.
We know our cause, and reverently embrace
The little space between a woman's breasts._
_It is our holy land, and we, the guests
Of passion, brand all other hosts as base.
The bees have led us to their treasure-chests,
A foxglove-sceptre and an hyacinth-mace,
The meadow's fleeting broidery and lace.
Their heaven like ours is nigh to vulgar jests.
A blossom's goal and glory is to grace
The little space between a woman's breasts._
_Prince, be content and choose your resting-place,
Ere we be all forgotten with our quests,
And this thin earth go crumbling into space,
The little space between a woman's breasts._
Thereat was scandal, and a priest exclaimed that man was half a
beast.
I could have told him that before. Man was the half I like the
least.
To obviate a sinful fate the monks laid on us many weeks
Of penance, wasting us the more with these inventions of the
Greeks.
Some paid in cash, some chose the lash--their backs were pitiful to
see--
While Bishop Adhémar of Puy recited magic formulæ
That lurched us forward to our doom. We cleft the sultanate of
Roum,
Calling for bread. The peasants fled. We swept the country like a
broom.
Our armed migration choked the road. It ran ahead, a stream that
flowed
Uphill to glory, so it seemed; and so imagination strode--
O Jack o' lantern!--into the unknown. The Virgin on a silver
throne,
Our leaders swore, went on before us. I saw nothing but the Rhone,
The impulsive Rhone that tumbles down, and breaks clean through the
grey-walled town.
I heard it rustle in its bed where others heard the Virgin's gown.
I blamed the foeman for my thirst, for sandstorm, flies, heat,
scurvy--cursed
Them. Piles of grievance fumed until the red fire kindled. Madness
burst
All bounds, and capered in the glare that wrapped us round like
Nessus' shirt.
Each day 'twas there with yards to spare, and would not tear. How
blue can hurt!
In my delirium I smelt a mirage, heard the swallows skim
Above the reeds where angels knelt with envious eyes to watch me
swim.
The preacher said Jehovah's cloud and pillar would go with us. Yea,
The sky was on our heads alway. The sun rose up and cried aloud,
And stood immobilized at noon. We wondered if at Ajalon
The Jews thanked Joshua for the boon of this divine phenomenon.
We came to Nice and formed a siege with tortoise, belfry, catapult,
And curse that brought even less result. Each lordling quarrelled
with his liege,
Layman with priest, until the place surrendered, and again we
lurched
Forward. I heard our name was made. I only saw how it was smirched.
My master clasped a small, soiled glove, and promised deeds for
love's sweet sake
That took my breath, as though his death would please The Burr. I
lay awake
All night afraid to cry for fright. I tried my best to be
full-grown,
A child now loth to be alone. My misery was all my own.
I well recall our knights' first charge. It was as though a loaded
barge
Should seek to crush a dancing skiff. The foe was small, the plain
was large.
Our men returned with horses spent. It seemed the Turkish cowards
meant
To harry, not oppose. Sometimes we caught them full, and down they
went.
Strange that within so short a space I felt the strong effects of
grace!
The preaching man upon his ass called it a miracle. It was.
I, polishing my master's helmet, also longed to overwhelm
The miscreants, to hew in bits the devil and his earthly realm.
A boy's high spirits, weariness, a heart impulsive as the Rhone,
The wish to get this business done, the thought of little
Sunflower-tress--
A flower beside The Burr, and "Why, if knights sing rubbish, should
not I?"--
The preaching man's persistence, these stirred me to action by
degrees.
We had our fill at Dorylæum. Our rogues were Paladins. We won,
And weighed our booty by the ton. That night we chanted a Te Deum,
A myriad voices in the dark; they rose like one colossal lark
Ere dawn. My soul flew up with them to see the new Jerusalem
And spite my tutor. I was mad to be a fighting-man, would pad
My arms like muscles. So my lord took me to foray. I was glad.
I had one thought: my hands were wet. That angered me: my mouth was
dry.
I had one fear: I might forget my master's silly battle-cry.
Belike 'twas well no foe would stand--our cavaliers were out of
hand--
So I was baulked. With scarce a blow we filed across the wasted
land
For leagues, till Baldwin turned aside, and out of Peradventure
carved
His slice, Edessa. We were plied to march on Antioch half-starved.
For seven months sheer courage toiled to take the town. Its
ramparts foiled
Our engines. Sulkiness sat down within us, and temptation coiled
Tight round our bodies; every vice was lurking like a cockatrice.
Ah, flesh can never quite repel the sinuous things which thoughts
entice.
You honey-coloured Syrian girls, whose voices turned our knights to
thirls,
I looked away and stopped my ears by thinking of the glossier
merles
At home. The arm upheld by Hur had not sufficed him to deter
The dissipation of our force, alas. My lord deceived The Burr.
'Twas worse when treachery let us in. Blood, lechery, pillage, fire
and din
Burned an impression on my mind: the sexual ugliness of sin.
Cool Bohemond called Antioch his. Ere we had killed our mutineers,
We the besiegers were besieged by Kurbugha and his Amírs.
Alternate famine and carouse brought plague; but doubtless God
allows
Expensive trials of faith that we might learn the magic formulæ.
We melted, melted; kites were fed upon us, dogs ran dripping red
From piles of nameless carrion, the race that Europe might have
bred.
Throughout our ranks desertion raged by daily sermons unassuaged.
The preaching man was first in this "rope-dancing." Disillusion
aged
My youth by years. My master stayed. If he had erred he promptly
paid.
The pestilence ran after him. Despite the fervour I displayed
He died of sores, this prince of tilt, though guarded by ten
hallowed charms,
This subject of all _trouvère_-lilt, lord in an hundred ladies'
arms.
Oh, how I struggled to be brave when the Pope's legate, grey and
grim,
Said simply this beside the grave: "Christ died for you. You died
for Him."
Only his jester seemed to care, and ceased awhile to swear and
daff.
"Who," he repeated in despair, "will pay me for his epitaph?"
_Poor friend, this alien hungry land
Has closed her lips upon her prey.
The tree is spoiled into her hand;
She sucks the brook's thin veins away._
_A sterner voice than bade you come
To reap the tears that exiles sow
Has called you to her longer home,
That neither bids nor lets you go._
_Seven times you baulked her lawless laws,
And foiled the customs of the year;
But Death defends the tyrant's cause,
And makes the silent court his lair._
_The lease of life, that none can own,
Is written on her agent's roll;
And from the desert and the sown
He takes a harsh and equal toll,_
_High-handed, scorning code or text.
No hope the debtor's gaol unlocks.
A friend appeals? He is the next
To occupy the narrow box._
_The witness cowers, pale with fear,
When Death the stalker passes by;
And only prays he may not hear
That ugly sound--a victim's cry._
_One weeps; his eyes are wet as long
As on Death's hand the blood is wet.
He says: "The King can do no wrong!"
And craves permission to forget._
_How briefly to an echo clings
The memory of these solemn days,
The thought of those tremendous things
That Death implies but never says._
_An hour ago we laid you down.
The tender, tardy autumn rain
Is dried within the dusty town,
And we are at our rounds again._
With every round our spirits sank in bodies lean and members lank.
I saw the soul of man, a cave, a wick that smouldered and smelled
rank.
Men's fluid facts may wash the grime from pictures of a distant
time,
But I can paint the truth in one small touch: our poets ceased to
rhyme.
Such was the army's hopelessness. I understood, who once had seen
Our fading gardener rouse himself to kick and curse the wolf-cub,
Life.
I would not let my feet desert, but oh the woods--the woods of home
That bent and beckoned in the damp zephyr in vain! I could not
stoop
To play false in an enterprise however mad, if once begun.
Besides another miracle was wrought in me. I was in love.
I was enamoured of dear Christ; His utter beauty struck me dumb,
His face alone could compensate for scenes that almost made me long
For blindness. Yea, to Him I turned from all this heartache,
nightly kissed
His hand with passion. I at least would not betray the children's
Friend.
Haply His strength has always lain in contrast. I found strength to
press
Toward the mark. Not so the host: we could not kick it to its feet.
Then heaven inspired us to devise a pious fraud--The Holy Lance.
We hid it in Saint Peter's crypt, and dug it up. The people wept
With rapture at this talisman, and sang the Psalm "Let God arise."
Also our chiefs--they knew my zeal--bade me complete the heartening
sign.
White-plumed, white-horsed, with golden shield and halo, I
contrived to appear
On the horizon, waved my sword while Adhémar proclaimed Saint
George.
Our men responded with a shout. Through the five gates they tumbled
out,
An headlong torrent. In a trice the infidel was put to rout,
And I joined in to hack and prod. Pure Tancred praised me with a
nod.
Ascetic Godfrey even spoke to me: "Lad, you belong to God."
I won my spurs. They _made_ me proud. Before my sword the wizards
bowed,
Though me they washed. In vigil and fast I joined the perfect
order, vowed
To hold my manhood chaste, to gird on might with right and
courtesy,
To speak the truth, and so to be at variance with the common herd.
Such loftiness a man can feel once in a flash: strong arms, clean
hands
That forged us into iron bands to unify the world with steel.
But as I left the altar daft with the ambition I had quaffed--
A word can kill a century--one of my perfect brothers laughed:
_I took the vow of virtue
As others take to vice.
I could not break my heart of you.
Men call that sacrifice._
_The priests applauded nature.
Poor devil, she was loth
Enough. The love of God and you
Has made me hate you both._
And I was sad that Christians, clad in robes so dazzling, were not
glad
To keep them spotless from the world, and give the Virgin all they
had.
Yet I was racked by continence of all we rightly rank as sense.
I hungered for the Sunflower-tress that now my lips would never
press.
I wrenched and wrestled to believe that God had sent us here to
grieve
Our bodies with this fruitlessness, that only fakirs could achieve
His purpose. Then in blind revolt my soul like an unbroken colt
Ran round and round an empty field. The hedge was thick. I could
not bolt,
Though one poor knight on stiffened knee revealed beneath his
breath to me
His thoughts on women while the monks recited magic formulæ.
I sought for solace in renown. Men watched me swagger through the
town
The youngest knight in Christendom. When women passed I tried to
frown.
A year I suffered in this way before the wreck of our array
Would undertake the final march. My soul was saved by movement. May
Was with us, when my tutor closed his wintry Juvenal and posed
Mid nightingales to quote and kiss the _Pervigilium Veneris_.
I drove his authors from my head, and read Augustin hard instead;
But sap was mounting in my veins and western groves where finches
wed.
To these no sound of sapphire seas, no stunted firs of Lebanon,
Not Tyrian dyes nor Tripoli's loud yellows deafened. We ran on
Through landmarks famed in Holy Writ, Emmaus, Bethlehem ... at last
We saw the walls of Zion lit blood-red by sunset and the past.
The conquest of another world unfurled beneath our feet, the land
Of miracle and mystery lay as a bauble in our hand.
Men flung their caps up, feigned a swoon. With prostrate lines of
us the moon
Drew silver circles round the site. A cock crowed--many hours too
soon.
We thought to prise the gates ajar. My tutor wrote their private
Lar
Or else--with Tacitus--their folk designed them for eternal war.
The moat was wide; we feebly tried to stop its gape with pebbles,
cried
"Fall, Jericho!" The blessèd wall stood firm; but Christ was on our
side.
The Church had saved Him from His wan repute and thrust Him in our
van,
Bronzed, scarred. Alas, the first crusade had made Him out a
fighting man!
He taught the Turks to mock Giaours!... sent timely Genoese to
build
Wheeled wooden turrets. These we filled brimful. Jerusalem was
ours.
We entered reverent, barefoot; slew three livelong nights and
mornings through,
Then paused to sing a thanksgiving. We massacred the morrow too.
And I was glad a Christian lad could boast of some small
suffering _ad
Majorem Dei gloriam_. I only longed to burn Baghdad.
Nay, I can say I never hid to chamber as my fellows did.
I felt my conscience clear as frost, and touched no woman--God
forbid.
I set my contrite soul apart with mass, procession, penance, rites
That took me out to see the sights, brushing ecstatic lanes athwart
The quiddering mob with tears of joy--my tutor's phrase was hoi
polloi--
Though few were left. Some Greeks of ours confused Jerusalem with
Troy.
But most the bestial German louts made even their hardest allies
sick;
They ran to mutilate the quick and sniff the dead with joyous
snouts.
Shriven, forgiven, we embraced each stone that Christ had touched,
and placed
Such relics under treble guard. One note in our rejoicings jarred.
It seemed some types of Jewish dog escaped the flaming synagogue,
And their ingratitude was base. They joined to form a
wailing-place.
I heard them as I roamed among blind alleys dark and overhung
By one-eyed dens. With whining nose against the wall the pack gave
tongue:
_Behold Thy people, Lord, a race of mourners.
Through this Thy sacred dwelling-place they creep
Like strangers. Hearken, Lord, in holes and corners
We sit alone and weep._
_For Thy decree, most terrible and holy,
That as the fathers sow the sons shall reap,
For all Thy just affliction of the lowly,
We sit alone and weep._
_For all the glory that is now departed,
For all the stones that Thou hast made an heap,
Yea, for the city of the broken-hearted,
We sit alone and weep._
_For all the wealth wherewith Thou hadst endowed her,
For all our shepherds gone astray like sheep,
For all Thy temple's jewels ground to powder,
We sit alone and weep._
_Because our soul is chastened as with lashes,
Because Thine anger like a stormy deep
Goes over us, in sackcloth and in ashes
We sit alone and weep._
Nobody gave them heed; indeed each man was thinking how to speed
His interests, and if the prey would satisfy ambition or need.
To honest minds with zeal imbued the Pope's indulgence, their own
merit
Bestowed some licence to be lewd, and take--their preachers said
"inherit."
Even I who was in love with Christ, I with the conscience clean and
cold
That hankered not for lands or gold, was wondering how to clinch my
hold
On reputation, while our chiefs, before we could consolidate,
Rode a great wallop round the State and split it into petty fiefs.
Their overlords revolted me. Alas, for our brief unity!
Edessa snarled at Antioch, Jerusalem at Tripoli.
Poor Godfrey, who would not accept a crown where his Redeemer wore
Thorns, nor be strong where Jesus wept! From the beginning weakness
crept
Into our councils. Worse, we watched the bulk of our brave lads
disperse
Well-pleased. At most we raised the ghost of needful power to hold
their post.
Franks and Provincials, German brutes that bullied babes and
prostitutes,
Lombards and Flemings, made for home with clapping and the sound of
flutes.
It flowed away, the unstable stuff, to whom a cause was but a noun.
They stood to sea. Thank heaven 'twas rough! My place was here with
my renown.
They vanished ... home ... to Sunflower-tress ... home, where a man
may die obscure!
Far off a carle of Albemarle trolled chanties like a Siren's lure.
_East, are you calling still,
Who tried your strength of will
For naught on brown Ulysses long ago?
We have an island too,
And haul away from you
To cleaner kin that bend a stronger bow._
_Your caravans string out
On many a golden route
The turbaned Magi's offerings; but we
Steer forth on loner trails
Through rough wind-scented vales
To England, the oasis of the sea._
_Child Jesus chose you, East,
Not that He loved us least,
But just because His Father had foreseen
The dear and only Son
Might dwell too long upon
Our swinging greys and many-coloured green._
So we were left alone. The spring broke out in buds of bickering.
Each summer brought contentious fruit. Strife waxed with every
waning king.
And I waxed also, better known, resolved to reap what I had sown.
My childless manhood fixed my heart. The Holy Land was all my own.
I grew in grace with man--I hoped with God; from Beersheba to Dan
I went about my Father's work. Faith could not shirk what Faith
began.
Sometimes qualms came. I looked askance on Bishop Daimbert's
schemes to enhance
His seat. The native Christians sighed they missed the Caliph's
tolerance.
Not that had hurt me, but the void which love will make if
unemployed.
I spent my strength to keep him quiet, and free the thoughts that
he decoyed,
Till woods and Rhone were out of range. I often wondered at the
change
In nature's child, in me. The formulæ were there. "God's ways are
strange."
Yet in my struggle with the powers of darkness I recalled the
showers
Of light that fought the undergrowth to catch the singing of the
flowers.
Time passed, and no one seemed to reck of Zenghi, the first Atabek,
Though every year we failed to act the Saracens grew more compact.
In vain I urged that we might fall, so slender was our human wall,
So numberless the foe beside the Templars and the Hospital.
The answer was that dyke and fosse were useless when we had the
Cross,
With other relics by the score, to guard against defeat or loss.
My prophecies of coming ills fell on deaf ears and weakly wills.
I did my best. You know I did, who saw me peer beyond the hills
Where Karak like a lighthouse loomed at waves of sand that never
spumed,
The tideless main, an ocean-plain bare, petrified. Its silence
boomed.
I saw in all that vastitude, the one, the drab, the many-hued,
No sign of life, no moving speck; and yet I knew that trouble
brewed.
I tortured every hour to find material things to prop behind--
Forgive me, God!--Your earthly realm. The need was great, for it
was blind.
The mathematics of Abul Hassan, three hundred years at school
In Arabic philosophy, showed that the West was still a fool.
Nay, gently, call her still a babe. How should she know that I, the
Great,
Had learned from savages to prate of compass and of astrolabe.
Our miracles were not so sure to heal as Rhazes' simplest cure.
His friends the moon and stars obeyed the rules that Abul Wafa
made.
My stolen lore raised me above my fellows. Everything but love
Was mine, respect, authority. The jealous Churchmen dared not move.
Our infant realm could not dispense with me, its shield and main
defence.
I knew the Damascene recipe for making steel, and made it cheap.
My mind was fertile in resorts. I spent the pilgrims' fees on
forts,
And settled, for their skill in trade, Venetian slavers at our
ports.
Howbeit I trembled lest our main enthusiasm should be for gain.
I stripped myself to work against the working of the money-brain.
And I was glad I passed for mad and single-eyed as Galahad.
I sacrificed in saving Christ the profit that I might have had.
Nothing that I could do availed. My tongue grew bitter, girded,
railed.
My labour only builded Me, but not the kingdom. So I failed.
Our Viscounts could but show their gums, while from Aleppo, Hama,
Homs,
The foe crept onward like the months, culling our conquests like
ripe plums.
For all response in Chastel Blanc and towering Markab-of-the-Sea
Some clerkly knight in red-crossed white recited magic formulæ;
Then darkly hinted science, hell and I were leagued, because their
spell
Would not or could not stave the blow that I foresaw. Edessa fell.
Curse our degenerate Poullains! The breed had need of spurs not
reins.
To stand an empty sack upright was easier than to warm their veins
Save with amours. One night I knelt to pray; but on the battlement
Hard by a lordling twanged a harp. I smelt the bastard's eastern
scent.
He thought his leman lay behind my casement, where the jasmin
twined
And almost jingled.... Oh the woods at home and whitethroats
calling blind!
_Suppose you left that window and came down
To meet me. Do not turn away.
Also you need not frown.
I only say:
"Suppose."_
_Suppose--you are a woman of resource--
The fastenings of your door undone.
No! They are not.... Of course!
But, just for fun,
Suppose._
_Suppose that--safe among the trees below
The terraces--you chanced to find ...
Impossible!... I know,
But never mind.
Suppose._
_Suppose that--being there--an eager arm
Drew you towards the little dell....
Why redden? Where's the harm?
You might as well
Suppose...._
_Suppose that, bending over you, a man
Breathed words of which you knew the gist.
Suppose it!... Yes, you can....
No, I insist....
Suppose!_
_Suppose you shut the window? Now? Pray do,
And take a lonely night to learn
This tune shut in with you.
Till I return,
Suppose...._
Then I peeped out. Some breath divine had made his face, compared
with mine,
An angel's. Love with all its faults had set there our Creator's
sign.
That shook me. One of us was wrong. Which? He or I? His soul was
vexed
Neither by this world nor the next, but floated in a bubble of
song.
It haunted me, as he had said; it chimed and rhymed about my bed.
It filled my head with Sunflower-tress; but she--I writhed--was old
or dead.
Was all my suffering a waste? Had superstition wed me chaste
To Its effect? Was this my Cause? My tutor in the dark grimaced.
I saw him snug at home, and how he would have chuckled at my vow!
Well, who laughs last.... I pictured him a dotard or in hell by
now.
I prayed for help all night; and, warned by lost Edessa, Baldwin
made
Great efforts to placate our God. The answer was a fresh crusade.
This was an answer none could doubt. We heard a preacher more
devout
Than ours was quartering the west, and pulling true believers out.
He hight Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the home of light and
miracles.
The wives and mothers trembled so before his spirit's tentacles,
They hid their males--in vain. He swept the Emperor Conrad with
him, kept
The collar of his pale adept, emasculated Louis Sept.
He cured King's Evils, raised the dead, he cast out devils by the
gross.
'Twas said he promised us twelve legions of angels.... From the
darkest regions
Men flocked to Metz and Ratisbon. News came of more than half a
million,
Not counting those that rode apillion. Our battle was as good as
won.
Such glorious news might well inflame our hopes. We waited. Nothing
came,
Not even light Turcopuli nor Conrad's Golden-footed Dame.
Our Poullains first began to whine; the fainthearts said the fault
was mine.
Saint Bernard was the oracle of Europe, I of Palestine.
And nothing came ... no troops.... The Greek misled, starved,
poisoned, murdered them,
Betrayed them to the Turk, whose bleak deserts went over them. Week
by week
We waited. Nothing. Cadmus saw them cut to bits, Attalia's maw
Could not be sated with their ruck. King Louis' mind had just one
flaw:
He would not hear of strategy, staked all on supernatural help.
And nothing came, and nothing came. Our half-bred curs began to
yelp
"Good God, if truly God is good!" They kissed the Cross. Gems hid
the wood.
Had He forgotten? Was He deaf? Could such things be? Who
understood?
Not I, though I had kept my word to save the Lamb by fire and
sword.
And after twelve long lustra spent in service this was my reward.
Louis and Conrad struggled through one day with some small retinue.
I watched. Almost I could foretell what they and Providence would
do.
And I remember, as we fared, a Sufi--so the sect is named--
Sat by the road as though he cared no jot for us, while he
declaimed:
_Her home is in the heart of spaciousness,
In the mid-city of ideals. The site
Is harmony, the walls are made of light.
There with the mother-thoughts she stands to bless
The godlike sons sent forth with her caress
To make new worlds. I see them all unite
Into the whole that our most starry flight
Of worship knew far off, and strove to express.
What can we do for her? We run to ask
As restless children for a grown-up task,
While wisdom in the porch, their kind old host,
Smiles at nurse nature, and replies: The most,
The least that we can do for Beauty is
To love for love's sake and serve God for His._
But Conrad drove his lance in jest right through the ragamuffin's
chest,
Because his creed was not as ours; and on we rode. I lost my zest.
To take Damascus was our plan, relying on a talisman.
I knew that this would not suffice, for I was still a fighting man.
It ended in repulse and shame. Saint Bernard proved we were to
blame
For want of faith. Ah, some of us had had too much. We said the
same
Of him. At our return thick mobs of women filled the church with
bobs
And bows, poor puppets, trying hard to sing between their stifled
sobs:
_God, whose Son has fathomed sorrow,
Give a mother strength to say:
Mine has faced and found To-morrow.
I will try to face To-day._
They turned to me. They thought me wise because I had been led by
lies
To blind myself to them; and now I saw things through a woman's
eyes,
And I went out. Not yet the end. Since innocence alone could save,
Saints hit on infant infantry, and fifty thousand found the grave.
My gorge rose, yet I stopped my ears. I had no hope, but I was
tarred
With fame too much to show my fears. My duty lay in dying hard.
Oh irony! That fame increased the more its robes were patched and
pieced.
My whole ambition was fulfilled when power and confidence had
ceased.
The women kissed my feet, my horse; they clung to me like my
remorse.
I that set out to make the world had made myself believe by force.
Nay, I that knew we were reprieved at best, had I in truth
believed?
My youth came back. I seemed to meet my tutor's sneer in every
street.
Fate cursed us with three minor kings, a leper then. Against these
Things
Salah-ad-Din combined the entire orient. I wished our fate had
wings
Instead of feet to end our dumb, keen, futile questionings, to numb
The brain that binds us with the chain of kingdom go and kingdom
come.
One of our knights for plunder's sake undid us, roused the foe who
brake
In through the pass of Banias, cutting our lands in two like cake.
The hour was here, but not the man. That murderer Guy de Lusignan
Was sent to head our fight for life. The craven took for talisman
ME and my hundred years, alas, a relic of the man I was.
I toiled to still our private feuds. We marched upon Tiberias,
For none would listen when I urged our leaders to await attack.
We marched across the waterless inferno. Summer burnt us black.
The Moslems scorched us with Greek fire. As rain upon a funeral
pyre
Their arrows hissed in sheets upon the smoking scrub. "Go on!"
"Retire!"
Our rabble cried, starting aside like broken bows; they tried to
hide,
Split, fled for refuge to a hill, did nothing while the Templars
died.
When all was lost I cut my way out through the thicket of the fray,
And galloped for Jerusalem to adjure Guy's Queen to stand at bay.
In this last desperate passage each proud noble still opposed his
friend.
A little while and we were penned, and yet a little while a breach
Was made. Jehovah's chosen seat was tottering, but no Paraclete
Came down to comfort us. I made some sallies. Then the Queen would
treat.
Perhaps in our appeal for ruth my wording stumbled on the truth,
"One God that went by many names," or else I knew Him in my youth,
Or else that Sufi haunted me with something that I could not see,
Something that only had not been because we would not let it be.
And when the foe marched in, I own that I was thinking of the Rhone
Long, long ago, and wondering--a child once more--if it had grown.
Yet there remained the sharpest cup to drain: the moan of us went
up,
When from the topmost dome was hurled the Sign that should have
ruled the world.
Down, down it rumbled with our grand designs. All we had built or
planned,
Toiled, bled for, crumbled at a touch, was ruined like a house of
sand.
So soon we pass. The wind knows why. The efforts of a century,
Three generations' handiwork failed in the twinkling of an eye.
And I was sad to think that shadows occupy us all. I had
No hope of earth. What boots a toy that thinks its maker raving
mad?
My soul had passed through every phase and, counting forty thousand
days,
Was farther off than at the start from comprehending heaven's ways
Or bowing to them. I came nearest when I pressed my childish ear
Earthward through briar and bramble bowers to catch the singing of
the flowers.
The last remains of faith were shaken when I, the oracle, was
taken.
My pride was made to sleep in chains. I prayed that I might never
waken,
But woke. They gave me to a _rais_ who wanted cattle, not advice.
He flogged me down to Damietta. I was old and fetched no price.
Nathless my battling heart was brave enough to work me till I
dropped.
I passed for twopence to a Copt who sold me as a galley-slave
To Muscat. In the rhythmic stroke, old, undefeated, gnarled as oak
I creaked and strained against my fate, until that Sufi-something
broke.
'Twas not my heart. An inner morn put the dark age in me to scorn,
And in the light I found myself, a child at play with worlds
unborn,
For all that I had thought and read, and fought and watched the
world be led
By any who contrived to cut a knot with that blunt tool, the head.
I laughed to think how sparrows might look down upon our highest
flight,
While each succeeding age would have its oracle or stagyrite,
Would trace the good we never did, the evil that we never saw,
And out of our blind pyramid extract a stepping-stone to Law.
Here, where ambition had to cease in servitude, I tasted peace,
Free of illusion stretched and yawned. A fool would clamour for
release.
I make the rowers' bench a throne to think, and thought implies
Alone,
Of changing woods and endless streams. My happiness is all my own.
And often, when my mates deplore a brother who shall row no more,
I talk about my wolf-cub, Life. They think I speak in metaphor.
They gather round me all agog, they think a chronicle and log
Of Progress lies in withered hands. Their cry is for an epilogue.
Has aught been drafted yet? A blot, an echo void and polyglot.
Each century is written off as preface. Yes, most true.... Of what?
My gathered weight had held me bound to find for every fog a
ground,
For every riddle a reply, an end to Being that goes round.
Now I can say, I do not know if there will be a book at all,
Or if the deepest chapters go beyond some writing on the wall,
Though wiser worlds will yet embark, sworn to eclipse our sorry
trades,
Succeed, and leave their little mark: a dynasty of thought that
fades,
Fresh undergrowths of formulæ. Through these no _human_ eye can see
The open glade--the _last_ crusade, in which Jerusalem might be
The symbol of all peopled space, and Time an emblem of the day
On which the nations march as one to liberate and not to slay.
A story has no finish when it leads to nowhere out of ken?
O friend, the lack of knowledge brings wisdom within the reach of
men;
For whether hope can ever fit the future matters not a whit.
My duty is to tug my oar--so long as I am chained to it.
XIX
FUSION
It was fulfilled. The giant _dhow_ bestirred
Herself, burst from her slender moorings, ran
Exulting on her course beyond the green
Thin shallows to the deeper violet
Of that great gem wherein the continents
Are flaws. With creaking oars and fluttering sails
The wingèd ghost swept outward. On the prow
Unveiled the Queen stood whiter than the sails,
And save the revelation made no sign;
And all the sound of singing was brought low.
Then, as the vision vanished in the hushed
Twilight that painted out the caravan,
Leaving the pilgrims but a _burnûs_-blur
On the drab canvas of the shore, a wail
Rose, and to them the Dreamer's last reply:
"The aimless spindrift mingles with the scats
Where suddenly the desert is the beach.
A low wind whimpers up and down the flats
Seeking some obstacle to lend it speech.
"The sky bleeds pale as from a mortal wound,
Darkening the waters. To a treble E
Gulls stiffly wheel their nomad escort round
A white sail dwindling in the impassive sea.
"A last beam smites it with a benison.
The lantern twinkles fainter at its mast.
It bears the purpose in me that is gone,
The only thing that cannot be, the past.
"Let there be night. Shall evensong complain?
My love was utter. Now I seek no sign.
Mine eyes have seen, and shall not see again.
Out of the deep shall call no voice of mine.
"Yet I, whose happiness is hidden from view,
Have climbed the hill and touched eternity,
And Pisgah is a memory--of you,
A white sail sinking in the summer sea."
The ship drove spaceward to the skyline's crater,
The last of day flared vibrant as a cry,
And in the Dreamer Emptiness loomed greater
Than the unrifted pumice of the sky.
He turned to see the friends whose hope had ended
Like his beside the gulf. He was alone.
The singers and the glory that had blended
With meaner notes and lowly, all were gone
Into thin air. But, patient of his tether,
Enduring as the dream he would not break,
Only old Tous remained. As back together
They fared, once more it seemed the camel spake:
"Lo, these the fleeting and the true,
The keen to sacrifice and slow,
The plumed, the crawling, all were You
That started hither long ago.
For man is many when begun,
But Love can weave his ends to one.
"The new, the ancient, song and prose,
The lower road, the higher aim,
The clean, the draggled, dust and snows
Were you the striving, you the same.
Pride and endeavour, love and loss,
The pattern is the threads that cross.
"Tilth, waste and water, sand and sap,
Tare, thorn and thistle, wine and oil,
Run through _your_ Nature like a map,
Are YOU. The ores that vein the soil
Of time and substance manifold
Await the hour that makes them gold,
"That found the force of you dispersed
On all adventure save a quest,
And part perhaps was on the worst.
It sent you all upon the best,
Wherein the journey is the goal.
Now leaving you they leave you whole.
"The rabble melts, but more remains:
The golden opportunity
By which the choir in us attains
Not unison but unity.
We feel the sunbeam, not the motes.
The Voice is made of many notes.
"Slave, merchant, scholar, fighting-man,
The gambling, stumbling, praying kith
We called the Singing Caravan,
Have made their song at least no myth
Not dawn to which yon skylark soared
But earth is his and your reward.
"The story ends, but not the book.
Sufi, the Queen that you ensued
Led and shall lead you still to look
On peace--it is not solitude.
Through her your warring kingdoms met,
And here is room for no regret."
So Dreamer-of-the-Age returned
With comfort, all his being fused
At last, and thus at night he mused
Beside the fire that in him burned:
"Heirs of the beauty yet to be,
Hail, from however far ahead
Or out of sight I hear you tread
The dust that made this tale and me.
"Each day shall raise me to rejoice
That lovers such as we must bear
The unbroken chain of life and share
Its thanksgiving. Perhaps my voice
"Shall be the servant of your mind,
Your linkman waiting in the arch
Of phantom city-gates to march
With you by secret ways. The wind
"Shall tell me of you, he and I
Be keenly with you, when you go
Forth in my footsteps and the glow
Of movement, steadfast to deny
"Only the frailer self. My grief
Shall answer your unspoken word
Through blithe interpreters, a bird
Waking, the sounds of rill and leaf.
"By many a caravanserai
I shall not fail to watch you come,
You of some far millennium,
Who, listening to the bird, will say:
"'I seem to know that tune of his;
He sings what all can understand.'
In the clear water dip your hand:
'His deepest note was only this.'
"You shall be glad of me, the shade,
Sighing 'O friend.' And I shall keep
The benediction of your sleep;
And, when the woods of darkness fade,
"Shall waken with you, I that had
Love to the full, and praised my lot,
Trusting in truth to be forgot
For worthier verse. Ah, make me glad,
"You that come after me, and call
From summits that outstrip my hopes.
Yet I shall linger on the slopes
And dwell with those who gave their all."
XX
LONG LEAVE
I bow my head, O brother, brother, brother,
But may not grudge you that were All to me.
Should any _one_ lament when this our Mother
Mourns for so many sons on land and sea.
God of the love that makes two lives as one
Give also strength to see that England's will be done.
Let it be done, yea, down to the last tittle,
Up to the fullness of all sacrifice.
Our dead feared this alone--to give too little.
Then shall the living murmur at the price?
The hands withdrawn from ours to grasp the plough
Would suffer only if the furrow faltered now.
Know, fellow-mourners--be our cross too grievous--
That One who sealed our symbol with His blood
Vouchsafed the vision that shall never leave us,
Those humble crosses in the Flanders mud;
And think there rests all-hallowed in each grave
A life given freely for the world He died to save.
And, ages hence, dim tramping generations
Who never knew and cannot guess our pain--
Though history count nothing less than nations,
And fame forget where grass has grown again--
Shall yet remember that the world is free.
It is enough. For this is immortality.
I raise my head, O brother, brother, brother.
The organ sobs for triumph to my heart.
What! Who will think that ransomed earth can smother
Her own great soul, of which you are a part!
The requiem music dies as if it _knew_
The inviolate peace where 'tis already well with you.
EPILOGUE
"It's not as easy as you think,"
The nettled poet sighed.
"It's not as good as I could wish,"
The publisher replied.
"It might," the kindly critic wrote,
"Have easily been _worse_."
"We will not read it anyhow,"
The public said, "it's verse."
PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS
WEST NORWOOD, LONDON
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
All unusual, archaic and inconsistent spellings and usage have been
maintained as in the original text. The only changes made were:
In the original text, the words "polymêtis" and "hoi polloi" were
written in Greek.
I added the entries for "In Memoriam" and "Acknowledgements" to the
Table of Contents.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Singing Caravan, by Robert Vansittart
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