Classic Poem

PART IV

The tender almond-blossom flushed and white
Sank floating in warm flakes through lucid air;
The rose flung forth into the sea of light
Her heart of fire and incense burning bare;
The nightingale thrilled all the breathless night
With passion so intense it seemed despair:
And still these lovers drank love's perfect wine
From that gold urn of secrecy divine.

Then Fate prepared the end. A grey old man,
Bowed down with grief who had not bent with time,
Made way to Walid in the full divan:
His son, great-hearted and in youth's hot prime,
Was now a fugitive and under ban
For an indignant deed of sinless crime;
A noble heirloom pearl the suppliant brought
To clear the clouded face ere he besought.

This pearl in Walid's mood of golden joy
Shone fair as morning star in rosy dawn;
He called his minion, Motar: Take this toy
Unto your Lady where she sits withdrawn,
With my love-greeting, and this message, boy:
Were this a string of such, a monarch's pawn,
A pearl for every note, it would not pay
That song I heard you singing yesterday.

They had been leaning for an hour perchance,
Motionless, gazing in each other's eyes;
Floating in deep pure joy, whose still expanse
Rippled but rarely with long satiate sighs;
Their souls so intermingled in the trance,
So far away dissolved through fervent skies,
That it was marvel how each fair mute form
Without its pulse and breath remained life-warm.

When rapid footsteps almost at the door
Stung her to vigilance, and her fierce start
Shook Weddah, and that lion of proud war
Must flee to covert like a timid hart:
But drunken with the message he now bore
The saucy youth flew in, Fate's servile dart,
Without announcement; and espied, what he,
Still subtle though amazed, feigned not to see.

The message with the goodly pearl he gave:
She could for wrath have ground it into dust
Between her richer teeth, and stabbed the slave
Who brought it; but most bitterly she must
Put on sweet smiles of pleasure, and the knave
With tender answer full of thanks entrust.
He lingered: Our kind lady will bestow
Some little mark of bounty ere I go?

Her anger cried: Only the message dear
Has saved the messenger from punishment;
If evermore as now you enter here
You shall be scourged and starved and prison-pent.
He cowered away from her in sullen fear,
And darted from the room; and as he went
The sting of her rebuke was curdling all
His blood of vanity to poison gall.

He hissed in Walid's ear the seething spite:
My Lord's pearl by my Lady's was surpassed;
In that rich cedar coffer to the right
I saw the treasure being hidden fast;
A gallant, young and beautiful and bright.
Unmothered slave, be that foul lie your last!
And clove the scandal with his instant sword
Strong Walid: Motar had his full reward.

When Weddah, plunged from glory into gloom,
Heard that last speech of Om-el-Bonain there,
A sudden ominous sense of icy doom
Assailed his glowing heart with bleak despair.
The moment that false slave had left the room
She sprang to seize her lover in his lair:
She bowed all quivering like a storm-swept palm;
He rose to meet her solemn, pale and calm.

He clasped her with strong passion to his breast,
He kissed her with a very tender kiss:
Soul of my soul! what lives men call most blest
Can be compared to our brief lives in bliss?
But one wild year of anguish and unrest;
Three moons of perfect secret love! Were this
My dying hour, I thankfully attest
Of all earth's dooms I have enjoyed the best.

What, weeping, thou, such kiss-unworthy tears!
The glory of the Azra must not weep,
Whom mighty Weddah worships, for cold fears;
But only for strong love, in stillness deep,
Secluded from all alien eyes and ears.
And now to vigil, and perchance to sleep,
Enshrined once more: be proud and calm and strong;
Your second visitor will come ere long.

And scarcely was all said when Walid came,
Full gently stealing for a tiger-spring;
His love and fury, hope and fear and shame,
All made with venom from that serpent's sting,
Like wild beasts huddled in a den of flame
Within the cool white palace of a king:
She rose to greet; he deigned no glance of quest,
But went and lolled upon that cedar chest.

I come like any haggler of the mart,
Who having sent a bauble seeks its price:
Will you forgive the meanness of my part,
And one of these fair coffers sacrifice?
A clutch of iron fingers gript her heart
Till it seemed bursting in the cruel vice:
And yet she quivered not, nor breathed a moan:
Are not myself and all things here your own?

I thank you for the bountiful award;
And choose, say this whereon I now sit here?
Take any, take them all; but that, my Lord,
Is full of household stuff and woman's gear.
I want the coffer, not what it may hoard,
However rich and beautiful and dear.
And it is thine, she said; and this the key:
Her royal hand outheld it steadfastly.

Swift as a double flash from thunder-skies
The angel and the devil of his doubt
Flamed from the sombre windows of his eyes:
He went and took the key she thus held out,
And turned as if he would unlock his prize.
She breathed not; all the air ran blood about
A swirl of terrors and wild hopes of guilt;
Calm Weddah seized, then loosed, his dagger-hilt.

But Walid had restrained himself, and thought:
Shall I unlock the secret of my soul,
The mystery of my Fate, that has been brought
So perfectly within my own control?
That were indeed a work by folly wrought:
For Time, in this my vassal, must unroll
To me, and none but me, what I would learn;
I hold the vantage, undiscerned discern.

He summoned certain slaves, and bade them bear
The coffer he had sealed with his own seal
Into a room below with strictest care;
And followed thoughtful at the last one's heel.
At noontide Amine found her mistress there,
Benumbed with horror, deaf to her appeal;
The sightless eyes fixed glaring on that door
By which her soul had vanished evermore.

Beneath the cedar whose noonshadow large,
Level from massive trunk, outspread halfway
Adown a swardslope to the river marge,
Where rosebowers shone between the willows grey,
The wondering bearers bore their heavy charge;
And where the central shadow thickest lay
He bade them delve a pit, and delve it deep
Till watersprings against their strokes should
leap.

Then waved them to a distance, while he bowed
Upon the coffer, hearkening for a space:
If truth bought that poor wretch his bloody shroud,
I bury thus her guilt and my disgrace;
And you, as by the whole earth disavowed,
Sink into nothingness and leave no trace:
If not, it is a harmless whim enough
To sepulchre a chest of household stuff.

With face encircled by his hands, which leaned
Upon the wood, he challenged clear and slow:
The hollow sound, his full hot breath thus screened
Suffused his visage with a tingling glow;
His pulse, his vesture's rustling intervened
And marred the silence: he drew back, and so
Knelt listening yet awhile with bated breath:
The secret lay as mute and still as death.

Above there in her chamber Weddah might
Have leapt forth suddenly their foe to kill.
Ev'n here with hazard of swift fight and flight
Escaped or perished as a warrior still;
But thus through him her name had suffered blight:
He locked his breath and nerves with rigid will.
So Walid first let sink his key unused,
Then signed the slaves back: they wrought on, he mused.

Against the dark bulk swelled the waters thin;
The stones and earth were trampled to a mound.
He then broke silence, stern and sad: Within
That coffer ye have buried, sealed and bound,
Lies one of the most potent evil djinn,
Whose hate on me and mine hath darkly frowned;
He sought to kill your mistress: Hell and Doom
And Allah's curse all guard this dungeon-tomb!

And Walid never spoke of this again,
And none dared ask him; for his brow grew black
His eye flamed evil and appalling when
Some careless word but strayed upon a track
That might from far lead to it: therefore men
Spoke only of the thing behind his back
The cedar shadow centred by that mound
Was sacredly eschewed as haunted ground.

But one pale phantom, noon and night and morn,
Was ever seen there; quiet as a stone,
Huddled and shapeless, weeping tears forlorn
As silent as the dews; her heart alone
And not her lips, whose seal was never torn,
Upbraiding sluggish death with constant moan.
Hushed whispers circled, piteous eyes were wet;
The captive djinnee holds her captive yet.

Thus Walid learned too well the bitter truth,
His home dissolved, its marvellous joy a cheat;
Yet gave no sign to her: for there was ruth
Of memories gall itself left subtly sweet;
And consciousness of wrong against her youth,
And surfeit of a vengeance so complete:
He could not stab her bleeding heart; her name
With his own honour he kept pure from shame.

She thought Death dead, or prisoned in deep Hell
As sole assuager of the human lot:
But when the evening of the seventh day fell
Walid alone dared tread the fatal spot:
She crouched as who would plunge into a well,
Livid and writhed into a desperate knot;
Her fingers clutched like talons in the mould:
Thus the last time his arms about her fold.

As if to glut the demon with her doom,
And break the spell, there where her corse was found
He had it buried; and a simple tomb
Of black-domed marble sealed the dolorous mound;
And there was set to guard the cedar gloom
A triple cirque of cypress-trees around:
Thus Love wrought Destiny to join his slaves
Weddah and Om-el-Bonain in their graves.

True Amine, freed and richly dowered, no less
Had served until the end her lady dear;
And shrouded for the grave that loveliness
Whose noon-eclipse left life without its peer:
Then sought the Azra in her lone distress,
And tended Abd-el-Aziz through the sere
Forlorn last days; and married in the clan,
And bore brave children to a valiant man.

Great Walid lived long years beyond this woe,
And still increased in wealth and power and glory;
A loyal friend, a formidable foe;
Each Azra was his mother's child, saith story;
And he saw goodly children round him grow
To keep his name green when Death took him hoary:
So prosperous, was he happy too? the sage
Cites this one counsel of his reverend age:

Have brood-mares in your stables, my young friend,
And women in your harem, but no wife:
A common dagger-blade may pierce or rend,
A month bring healing; this, the choicest knife
In Fate's whole armoury, wounds beyond amend,
And with a scratch can poison all your life;
And it lies naked in your naked breast
When you are drunk with joy and sleep's rich rest.

As surely as a very precious stone
Finds out that jeweller who doth excel,
So surely to the bard becometh known
The tale which only he can fitly tell:
A few years thence, and Walid's heart alone
Had thrilled not to a talisman's great spell,
His deathstone set in Hassan's golden verse;
Here poorly copied in cheap bronze or worse.

He ends: We know not which to most admire;
The lover who went silent to his doom;
The spouse obedient to her lord's just ire,
The mistress faithful to her lover's tomb;
The husband calm in jealousy's fierce fire,
Who strode unswerving through the doubtful gloom
To vengeance instant, secret and complete,
And did not strike one blow more than was meet.

With stringent cords of circumstance dark Fate
Doth certain lives here so entoil and mesh
That some or all must strangle if they wait,
And knife to cut the knots must cut quick flesh:
The first strong arm free severs ere too late;
Fresh writhings would but tangle it afresh:
To die with valiant fortitude, to kill
As priest not butcher; so much scope has Will.

These perished, and he slew them, in such wise
That all may meet as friends and free from shame,
Whether they meet in Hell or Paradise.
If he has won long life and power and fame,
Our darlings too have won their own set prize,
Conjoined for evermore in true love's name:
The Azra die when they do love, of old
Was graven with the iron pen, on gold.

May Allah grant eternal joy and youth
In fateless Heaven to one and all of these.
And for himself a little grain of ruth
The bard will beg, this once, while on his knees;
Who cannot always see the very truth,
And does not always sing the truth he sees,
But something pleasanter to foolish ears
That should be tickled not with straws but spears.