Chapter I: The Amulet

LILITH. SAUL. AMAK. NUBIAN.

LILITH _sits under pomegranate trees watching her child_ AMAK _playing
with Saul his father’s helm and spear. A light smoke is ascending
from the chimney of their hut, and through the doorway a naked
Nubian man is seen stirring the embers._ SAUL _sleeps_.

LILITH

Amak, you’ll break your father’s sleep: Come here and tell me what those spices are This strange man bakes our cakes with. It makes the brain wild. Be still, Amak: I’ll give you the strange man your father brought, And he will run with you upon his back to-day.

Come from your father or you’ll get no cake; He’s been a long journey. Bring me the pictured book he brought for you. What! Already cut to pieces? Put away that horn from your father’s ear, And stay that horrid noise: come, Amak.

[_Amak runs to his mother with a jade amulet, shouting._]

AMAK

Look, mother, what I’ve found.

[_He runs back again, making great shouts._]

LILITH

It dances with my blood: when my eyes caught it first I was like lost, and yearned and yearned and yearned, And strained like iron to stay my head from falling Upon that beggar’s breast where the jade stone hung. Perhaps the spirit of Saul’s young love lies here Strayed far and brought back by this stranger near. Saul said his discourse was more deep than Heaven.

For the storm trapped him ere he left the town Loaded with our week’s victuals: the slime clung And licked and clawed and chewed the clogged dragging wheels Till they sunk right to the axle: Saul, sodden and vexed, Like fury smote the mules’ mouths, pulling but sweat From his drowned hair and theirs, while the thunder knocked And all the air yawned water, falling water, And the light cart was water, like a wrecked raft, And all seemed like a forest under the ocean. Sudden the lightning flashed upon a figure Moving as a man moves in the slipping mud, Singing, but not as a man sings, through the storm, Which could not drown his sounds. Saul bawled “Hi! Hi!” And the man loomed, naked, vast, and gripped the wheels; Saul fiercely dug from under; he tugged the wheels; The mules foamed straining, straining. Suddenly they went. Saul and the man leaped in: Saul, miserably sodden,

Marvelled at the large cheer in a naked glistening man; Yet soon fell in with that contented mood, That when our hut’s light broke on his new mind He could not credit it—too soon it seemed: The stranger man’s talk was witchery. I pray his baking be as magical; The cakes should be nigh burnt.

[_She calls the_ NUBIAN. _He answers from within._]

NUBIAN

They are laid by to cool, housewife.

LILITH

Bring me the sherbet from the ledge and the fast-dried figs.

[_The_ NUBIAN _brings sherbet, figs, and a bowl of ice, and lays
them down_.]

[_She looks curiously at him. He is an immense man with squat,
mule-skinned features: his jet-black curled beard, crisp hair,
glistening nude limbs, appear to her like some heathen idol of
ancient stories._]

[_She thinks to herself._]

Out of the lightning In a dizzying cloven wink This apparition stood up, Of stricken trunk or beast’s spirit, Stirred by Saul’s blasphemies; So Saul’s heart feared, aghast. But lo, he touched the mischance and life ran straight! Was it the storm-spirit, storm’s pilot, With all the heaving débris of Noah’s sunken days Dragged on his loins; Law’s spirit wandering to us Through Nature’s anarchy, Wandering towards us when the Titans yet were young? Perhaps Moses and Buddha he met.

[_She speaks aloud._]

The shadow of these pomegranate boughs Is sweet and restful; sit and ease your feet. Eat of these figs; You have journeyed long.

NUBIAN

All my life, housewife.

LILITH

You have seen men and women, Soaked yourself in powers and old glories, In broken days and tears and glees, And touched cold hands— Hands shut in pitiless trances where the feast high. I think there is more sorrow in the world Than man can bear.

NUBIAN

None can exceed their limit, lady: You either bear or break.

LILITH

Can one choose to break? To bear, Wearily to bear, is misery. Beauty is this corroding malady.

NUBIAN

Beauty is a great paradox— Music’s secret soul creeping about the senses To wrestle with man’s coarser nature. It is hard when beauty loses.

LILITH

I think beauty is a bad bargain made of life. Men’s iron sinews hew them room in the world And use deceits to gain them trophies: O, when our beauty fails us did we not use Deceits, where were our room in the world— Only our room in the world? Are not the songs and devices of men Moulds they have made after my scarlet mouth, Of cunning words and contours of bronze And viols and gathered air? They without song have sung me Boldly and shamelessly. I am no wanton, no harlot; I have been pleased and smiled my pleasure, I am a wife with a woman’s natural ways. Yet through the shadow of the pomegranates Filters a poison day by day, And to a malady turns The blond, the ample music of my heart: Inward to eat my heart My thoughts are worms that suck my softness all away. I watch the dumb eyeless hours Drop their tears, then shapeless moaning drop.

Unfathomable is my mouth’s dream Do not men say? So secret are my far eyes, Weaving for iron men profound subtleties.

Sorceress they name me; And my eyes harden, and they say, “How may those eyes know love If God made her without a heart?

“Her tears, her moaning, Her sad profound gaze, The dishevelled lustres of her hair Moon-storm like” they say, “These are her subtleties” men say. My husband sleeps, The ghosts of my virgin days do not trouble him: His sleep can be over-long, For there is that in my embers Pride and blushes of fire, the outraged blood, His sleep makes me remember.

Sleep, hairy hunter; sleep! You are not hungry more, Having fed on my deliciousness; Your sleep is not adultery to me,

For you were wed to a girl And I am a woman. My lonely days are not whips to my honour.

[_She dries her tears with her hair, then fingers the amulet at her
throat._]

Yours, friend.

NUBIAN

[_Eagerly._] My amulet! My amulet!

[_He speaks gravely._] Small comfort is counsel to broken lives; But tolerance is medicinal. In all our textures are loosed Pulses straining against strictness Because an easy issue lies therefrom. (Could they but slink past the hands holding whips To hunt them from the human pale Where is the accident to cover? Spite fears bias.) I am justified at my heart’s plea; He is justified also.

For the eyes of vanity are sleepless—are suspicious. Are mad with imaginings Of secret stabs in words, in looks, in gestures.

Man is a chimera’s eremite, That lures him from the good kindness of days Which only ask his willingness.

There is a crazed shadow from no golden body That poisons at the core What smiles may stray: It mixes with all God-ancestralled essences, And twists the brain and heart. This shadow sits in the texture of Saul’s being, Mauling your love and beauty with its lies: I hold a power like light to shrivel it— There, in your throat’s hollow—that green jade.

[_He snatches at it as she lets it fall. He grows white and troubled,
and walks to where_ AMAK _is playing, and sees minutely strewn pieces
of paper_.]

[_He mutters._] Lost—lost. The child has torn the scroll in it, And half is away. It cannot be spelt now.

LILITH

God, restore me his love. Ah! Well!

[_She rises._]

I will go now; prepare our evening meal; And waken my husband, my love once.

NUBIAN

[_Musing._] The lightning of the heavens Lifts an apocalypse: The dumb night’s lips are scared and wide, The world is reeling with sound: Was I deaf before, mute, tied? What shakes here from lustre-seeded pomegranates Not in the great world, More vast and terrible? What is this ecstasy in form, This lightning That found the lightning in my blood, Searing my spirit’s lips aghast and naked? I am flung in the abyss of days, And the void is filled with rushing sound From pent eternities: I am strewn as the cypher is strewn. A woman—a soft woman! Our girls have hair Like heights of night ringing with never-seen larks, Or blindness dim with dreams: Here is a yellow tiger gay that blinds your night. Mane—Mane—Mane!

Your honey spilt round that small dazzling face Shakes me to golden tremors; I have no life at all, Only thin golden tremors. Light tender beast! Your fragile gleaming wrists Have shaken the scaled glacier from under me, And bored into my craft That is now with the old dreamy Adam With other things of dust.

LILITH

You lazy hound! See my poor child.

[_He turns to see_ LILITH _drop the bowl and cakes and run to_ AMAK—_who
is crying, half stifled under_ SAUL’S _huge shield_.]

[SAUL _opens his eyes_.]

* * * * *

II
THE SONG OF TEL THE NUBIAN

Small dazzling face!
I shut you in my soul;
How can I perish now?

But thence a strange decay—
Your fragile gleaming wrists
Waver my days and shake my life
To golden tremors. I have no life at all,
Only thin golden tremors
That shudder over the abyss of days
Which hedged my spirit, my spirit your prison walls
That shrunk like phantasms with your vivid beauty—

Towering and widening till
The sad moonless place
Throngs with a million torches
And spears of flaming wings.