Classic Poem

XI

But in a saintly gabardine set out
And crossed the moonlit streets, and left the town,
Nor stopped to hear the lonely owlet shout
His dreamy menace from the turret's crown,
But where the cypresses and myrtles hoar
Hid the white house of Ayaz, stooping down,
He thrust a letter underneath the door,
And faded in the shadow broad and brown.

XII

That letter bade the chamberlain beloved
Before the dawn to seek his master's face,
And plead until his blandishments had moved
The Shah to grant him twenty days of grace;
In twenty days a paper folded fair
Should Ayaz in his master's fingers place,
Which to the gracious Sultan would declare
Firdausi's secret wish, and plead his case.

XIII

The Sultan vowed: but for those twenty days
The Sultan yawned upon his peacock-throne;
The rebeck and the Turkish minstrel's lays
With their sweet treble jarred him to the bone.
All night he tossed in fever, all day long
Far from his blithe hareem he paced alone,
Or scowled to hear the trampling and the song
Where down the cool bazaar the lanterns shone.

XIV

At last, at last the twentieth morning broke,
And Mahmoud, flushed with pleasure, rose and cried
For fair Ayaz, who from his slumber woke,
And brought the scaled letter, white and wide.
In Allah's name the Sultan broke the seal;
His long-pent wishes satisfied, he sighed,
But reading on, he stared, and seemed to reel,
And crushed the leaf, and gazed out stony-eyed.

XV

It was that scathing satire, writ in fire,
And music such as the red tiger makes
Over a man, the food of her desire,
When she lies down among the crested brakes —
That satire which the world still shudders at,
Whose cadence in the hearer's sense still aches,
At bare recital of whose singing hate
The conscience of forgetful kings awakes.

XVI

" O Mahmoud, of the whole world conqueror,
You fear not me? — fear God! " The Sultan fell
With outstretched arms before the chamber door,
Ashen with rage, and his breast's heave and swell
Was like an earthquake; no word passed his lips,
But curses from the foulest pit of hell,
Till evening brought his soul through that eclipse,
And he rose up, and drank, and feasted well.

XVII

But old Firdausi, bearing eastward still,
Through many a Tartar camp, his woven mat,
At last, one evening, climbed a scarped hill
From whence he saw the white roofs of Herat:
Downward he passed, and in a garden, sweet
With roses and narcissus, down he sat,
And wondered if his mountain-weary feet
Might dare to rest where earth was smooth and flat.

XVIII

Then suddenly his tired eyes laughed at last,
For he remembered, by the gift of fate,
Where once he lodged in merry days long past
At Herat, in the arch above the gate.
There Abou'lmaani sold his ancient books,
A man discreet and old, without a mate,
And there Firdausi oft, in dusty nooks,
Had chanted verses till the night was late.

XIX

To Abou'lmaani in the dusk he went,
And found him still more wrinkled than of yore,
An owlish figure, angular and bent,
But hearty still and honest to the core.
So there among the rolls of parchment sere
Once more he drank the mystic Dikhan lore,
But never sought the daylight streets, for fear
Of treachery, and the hatred Mahmoud bore.

XX

And little rest he had, and brief delight,
For rumours from the court at Ghaznin ran,
And with a short farewell he fled by night
Across the mountains to the Caspian;
A gentle Sultan ruled from Astrabad
The jasmine-gardens of Mazinderan,
And to his little court, humble and sad,
One morning came a white-haired minstrel-man.