Classic Poem

BELLADONNA, BY ROBERT HICHENS

The Nile: Adorn our painted scene
With dahabeeyahs, sphinxes, scarabs
And choruses of fellaheen,
Saadeyehs, donkey-boys, and Arabs.

Here Nigel Armine brought his wife,
" La Bella Donna " — not to trim it,
A lady with a checkered life,
Prepared to go beyond the limit.

Idyllic love, divine but tame,
Had left her peevish, bored, and moody,
When up the Nile Diversion came —
A Greek-Egyptian called Baroudi —

A millionaire with noble head,
Soft voice, and eyes of burning glances,
The sort of scamp expressly bred
For recent white-and-tan romances, —

Who made her woo him. Sad to state,
His love was purely Oriental;
Which means, about the lady's fate
He didn't care a continental.

They met on shadowed desert scaurs,
Baroudi's tent the couple screening.

*****

(Observe, I quote these little stars;
Let Mr. Hichens clear their meaning).

He dropped a hint; she snatched it up.
With powdered lead in rank solution
She dosed her husband's coffee-cup
And would have wrecked his constitution.

But ere the fatal work was done
Appeared that heaven-sent physician
The famous Doctor Isaacson,
A Sherlock Holmes for intuition,

To spoil the game. With little ruth
He rent her sweet, angelic cover;
So Bella Donna owned the truth
And fled by night to join her lover.

He cast her off. In blinded haste,
Before the birds began to twitter,
She staggered far across the waste —
I hope to God a lion bit her!