Classic Poem

Farthest away in space and time,
I take in this Columbian year
One day its winding lanes to climb—
The ancient city of Tangier.
Old was it in Mahomet's dawn,
Old when the Cæsars ruled these shores;
Since ancient nations have withdrawn
The oldest people are the Moors.

Tarifa's towers our eyes release;
Gibraltar's outlines grow more soft,
The pillars fade of Hercules
And Atlas holds the world aloft;
Atlantic's gales the billows high
The open roadstead dash upon,
Beyond the breakers props the sky
The mountain named for Washington.

He tribute paid to these corsairs,
Wild, nervous men, who know not fear,
And while we Christians mutter prayers
Row to the beach of old Tangier;
Row past her mole, Tangier her dower,—
The sea reflects the shivered beam,—
When English Charles, Braganza's flower
Sultana made of his hareme.

The turbaned Customs men scarce nod,
The saw-toothed walls their gates retain,
We climb the street that Musa trod
When Tarik plucked the cross from Spain;
A thousand years we backward stem—
The sight our modern age dispels—
We are in old Jerusalem
When Jesus told the parables:

The potter shapes, the blind man grieves,
The palsied woman starts to walk,
And yonder marked the Forty Thieves
On Ali Baba's door with chalk;
Aladdin's uncle bawls his lamps,
The barber bleeds them who would shear,
The camel drivers pitch their camps
Outside the walls of old Tangier.

I see the Koran teacher's school,
Where little hairless heads, like eggs
Some pelican would overrule,
Wag to the texts he in them pegs;
And the high caller unto prayers
Does not disturb him who recites
Tinkling his bell on drowsy airs,
Tales from the soft Arabian Nights.

The squatted Berbers dreamy chant
In a café some desert troll,
Love is their sole intoxicant
And on its kiss no alcohol.
In hidden haunt, less lewd than poor,
With lancing height and bowstring thew,
The antelopèd, hussy Moor,
Dances with filly of the Jew.

In little shops their prices quote
Dealers in arms and stuffs and balms:
“All merchants cheat,” Mahomet wrote,
“Therefore do ye requite in alms.”
Though in the mosques we may not see,
Their socialism feel we may;
Religion is of Arabs three,—
Moses, Mahomet, Joshua!

His amputated hand in salt,
In the high jail, a festering man
Dies slowly for his desperate fault,—
The robber of the caravan;
No lawyers here acquit a thief,
Nor wealth ill-gotten can illude
Him at Maroc, the Great Shareef,
Who is of Mahmoud's holy blood.

Plain as the desert round Tangier,
Whose paths the cactus does not shade,
Are the few laws they need them here,
Where are no engines grasping trade;
One tyrant answers for a brood,
And immemorial is his right,
Marked like the palm's tall solitude
Against the Atlas mountain's height.

Morocco's state leans on the sky,
Its moon and stars the Arab's light,
No Ottoman's fell victory
Here has usurped a caliph's right;
For Muley Hassan's banner green
He did not get by barbarous force;
It streams like yonder green marine
That bounds in freedom like his horse.

Can we not blend with Islam's life
Our Christian slavery, so complex?—
The scullions' rule, the dress-thralled wife,
And houses built to tax and vex?
Thou desert robber! my cloak great
Strip off! it loads me like a chain;
To pass thy enemy in wait
I'll go with thee, miles, one or twain.

But climate, moisture, living chance,
More than his Gods make man excel:
O had Arabia conquered France
She had made gracious Charles Martel!—
Softened the vandal Christian's clan
That malt and mead had muddled thick,
And knighted into Solyman
The lame, black soul of Genseric.

Beneath my blind she cannot pierce,
A tall, young Berber mother slips,
Her babe she drops in hunger fierce,
She draws a knife, her face she strips,
And cuts some grass around my inn,—
Her clean and stringy lines I've booked:
'Tis by her creed a deadly sin
That on her charms a man has looked!

Such Moors their conqueror Akbah bought
With gold, a thousand pieces each.
To blend their Arab grace with thought,
O, could their like some Soldan teach
Woman's religious hate to cease,
That curses Christians passing through!
At Tafilet to treat a peace
And loose the slaves at Timbuctoo.

With such sweet airs as Westward blow,
From lands where zealots rage in vain,
The States of Barbary might know
A wealth they never had in Spain!
Their beauteous women might be free,
Their shambles might again be homes!
As when the Gods of poetry
Were rich Numidia's and Rome's.

Like desert springs which flood with rain,
These Berber wastes the sects outpoured
That deluged Islam's star in Spain
And withered it like Jonah's gourd;
Preachers like Balaam and his ass
Their sinewy state a sect made be:
They see the ships of Europe pass,—
Wild Ishmaels of theology.

This fragment of a former age
Thrust into Europe's feverish breath,
Is like our childhood's limpid page,
Or unawakening, restful death.
No wheels nor mechanisms here,
We have no adventitious power,
And, like the dead in dead Tangier,
Naked we shall be in that hour!