Chapter III

Above the storm, the thunder's growl,
The torrent's roar, the forest's howl,
Is heard his hunting-horn--an owl,
That hoots and sweeps before him:
And beneath the blinding leven,
On wild crags, the Castle riven
Of the Dumburg towers to heaven,
Beckoning on the demon-driven,
Beckoning on and looming o'er him.

AN ANTIQUE

Mildewed and gray a marble stair
Leads to a balustrade of urns,
Beyond which two stone satyrs glare
From vines and close-clipped yews and ferns.

A path, that winds and labyrinths,
'Twixt parallels of verdant box,
Around a lodge whose mossy plinths
Are based on emerald-colored rocks.

A lodge, or ancient pleasure-house,
Built in a grove beside a lake,
Around whose edge the dun deer browse,
And swans their snowy pastime take.

And underneath and overhead,--
The breathings of a water-nymph
It seems,--the violets' scent is shed
Mixed with the music of the lymph.

And where,--upon its pedestal,--
The old sun-dial marks the hours,
Laburnum blossoms lightly fall,
And duchess roses rain their flowers.

The air is languid with perfume,
As if dead beauties--who of old
Intrigued it here in patch and plume--
Again the ancient terrace strolled

With gallants, on whose rapiers gems
Once sneered in haughtiness of hues,
While Touchstone wit and apothegms
Laughed down the long cool avenues:

And there, where bowers of woodbine pave,
All heavily with sultry musk,
Two fountains of pellucid wave,
In sunlight-tessellated dusk,

I seem to see the fountains twain
Of Hate and Love in Arden, where,
In times of regal Charlemagne,
Great Roland drank and Oliver.

Where, wandered from Montalban's towers,
The paladin, Rinaldo, slept,
While, leaning o'er him through the flowers,
Angelica above him wept.

JAAFER THE BARMECIDE

_Scene, Baghdad: time of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid. Salih ben Tarif speaks._

With Imam Hassan I had reached the khan
Outside of Ambar. Jaafer at the door
Of his pavilion watched a caravan
Inbound from Yemen.--Ah, the bales it bore
Of richest stuffs and spices!--'Mid the rout
Of porters, camel-drivers, old and poor,
A singer stood,--a blindman, singing out
With luted preludes. Imam Hassan then:
"'Tis Zekkar; he, t' whom, with the blind about
The Mosque of Moons, I with our holy men
Scattered my silver at the hour of prayer,
When hearts are open unto Allah's ken.--
Danic or dirhem, though, were wasted there:
Yea, by the Prophet! had one sown dinars
_He_ had not budged one finger or that stare.
And so the beggars and the scavengers
Got all."
Then I: "The very same whom I--
Guard at the Western Portal--'neath the stars
Some midnights past heard singing. Dim the dry
Hot night; and Baghdad only knew of us
Until, gray shadows shuffling slowly by,
Pilgrims for Mecca passed, all vaporous
In dust and darkness; them we challenged not.
--Slaves, with the tribute of Nicephorus
The Roman, from long shallops, as they shot
Along the moonlit Tigris far away,
Timing their oars, raised languid chanting.--
What
This blindman sang was sweeter than--let's say--
The songs of Ibrahim, the dulcet frets
Of Zulzul's lute. I listened till the day
Made gold of all the city's minarets,
And the muezzin summoned us to pray."

Now while we gossiped, lounging slow along
The packed bazaar, a fisher with his nets
Passed, singing Abou Newas' newest song:
A honey-merchant, then, his tinkling mule
All hanap-hung with sweetness: then a throng
Of scholars and their Sheikh from mosque or school:
A milk-white woman on a cream-white ass,
Black slaves attending.... And--I am no fool!--
I knew her of the Court, the noblest class,
By her gem-bangled bracelets.... Let Haroun
On the Euphrates with Zubeideh pass
A single day, at royal Rekkeh,--noon
And night his harem here, so it is said,
Is all intrigue.--Then drawling out his tune,
"Ten thousand pieces to be paid, be paid,
For Yehya's head, Er Reshid's late vizier,"
A crier passed us. Then the market's shade
Glittered with weapons; and we seemed to hear,
Sword of the Khalif, Mesrour, and commands
Naming the Khalif. One swart officer
Flamed forth the Sultan's signet. And harsh hands
Were laid on--whom?--I saw not! For my sight
Was dazzled by the scimitars,--from bands
Of jeweled belts that burned,--and, keen and bright,
Swift hedged us out. Then broad the red blood dyed
The ground around a body--and, hoar white,
Was raised a severed head.--And, stupefied,
Elbowing the rabble, "By my beard!" I cried,
Marking the face, "Jaafer the Barmecide!"

A PRE-EXISTENCE.

An intimation of some previous life?
Or dark dream--by my waking soul divined--
Of some uncertain sleep? in which the sin
Of some past life, a life that some one lived--
Not I, yet I,--long, long ago in Spain,
I live again.... Wherein again I see
From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,--
Damascened corselet broken, his camail
And armet shattered,--deep within the eve's
Anger of brass, that burned around his helm,
A hurrying flame,--a galloping glitter,--one
Ride arrow-wounded. And the city catch
Wild tumult from his coming, wilder fear--
A cry before him and a wail behind,
Of walls beleaguered; ravin; conquered kings:
Triumphant Taric; shackled Spain--revenge.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
Housed near the Tagus--squalid and alone,
Save for his slave,--a dog he beat and starved,--
Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
A battle beacon, westerns; all my bones
A visible hunger; famished with the fear,
Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him--I, who held
Him, heart and soul, more hated than his God,
Stood silent. Fools had laughed. I saw my way.

War-times grow weapons, and the blade I found
Was hacked but pointed.--Well I knew his ways:
The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems
And bags of doublas.--Well I knew his ways.
No figure, woven in the hangings, where
He hugged his riches in that secret room,
Was half so still as I, who gauntly stole
Behind him, humped and stooping; and his heart
Clove to the center, stabbing from behind,
Thrice thro' his tattered tunic, murrey-dyed.
Forward he fell, his old face 'mid his gold,
Grayer and thinner than the moon of morn,
While slow the blood dripped, oozing through the cloth,
Black, and thick-clotting round the oblong wounds.
Great pearls of Oman, whiter than the moon;
Rubies of Badakhshân, whose bezels wept
Slim tears of poppy-purpled flame; and rich,
Rose, ember-pregnant carbuncles, wherein
Fevered a captive crimson, blurred with light
The table's raven cloth. Dim bugles wan
Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds
With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains
Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts;
Fire-opals, savage and mesmeric with
Voluptuous flame, long, sweet and sensuous as
Deep eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed
With talismanic violet, from tombs,
Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans,
Scattered the velvet: and like gledes amid,--
Splintering the light from rainbow-arrowed orbs,--
Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of
Golconda.... (One a dervish once had borne
Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun,
Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon,
Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held
Of some wild tribe.--Bleached in the perishing waste,
A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones,
A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull
One eyeball blazed--the diamond. At Aleppo
Bartered ... a bauble for his desert love.)
Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem heaped on gem,
Flashed, rutilating in the taper's light,--
Unearthly splinters of a rainbowed flame,--
A blaze of irised fire; and his face,
Long-haired, white-sunk among them. And I took
All! yea! all! all!--jewel and gold and gem!--
Although his curse burned in them! 'though, me-seemed,
Each burning jewel glared a separate curse.

* * * * *

Can dead men work us evil from the grave?
Can crime infest us so that fear will slay?...
Richer than all Castile and yet--not dare
Drink but from cups of Roman murra,--spar
Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold,--spar sensitive
To poison! I, no fool! and yet--a fool
To fear a dead Jew's malice!... Yet, how else?
Feasting within the music of my halls,
While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes,
Diaphanous, more tenuous than those famed
Of loomed Amorgos or of silken Kos,
Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed,
Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolf'sbane-slain!

THE KING

Up from the glimmering east the full moon swung,
A golden bubble buoyed zenithward
Above black hills. The white-eyed stars, that thronged,--
Hot with the drought,--the cloudless slopes of heaven,
Winked thirstily; no wind aroused the leaves,
That o'er the glaring road hung motionless,
Withered and whitened of the weary dust
From many hoofs of many a fellowship
Of knights who rode to'ards quest or tournament:
Among them those who brought the King disguised,
Whose mind was, "in the lists to joust and be
An equal 'mid unequals, man to man:"
Who from the towers of Edric passed, wherein
Some days he'd sojourned, waiting Launcelot:
That morn it was; ... for, with the morn, a horn
Sang at dim portals, musical with dew,
Wild echoes of wild woodlands and the hunt,
Clear herald of the stanchest of his knights.
And they, to the great tilt at Camelot,
Rode armored off, a noise of steel and steeds.

Thick in the stagnant moat the lilies lay,
Pale 'mid their pads; above them, huge with chains,
The drawbridge hung before the barbéd grate;
And far above, along lone battlements,
His armor moon-drenched, one lone sentinel
Clanked drowsily; and it was late in June.

She, at her lattice, loosely night-robed, leaned,
Thinking of one she loved: a pensive smile
Haunting her face; a face as fair as night's,
Night's when divinely beautiful with stars,
Two stars, at least, that dreamed beneath her brows.
Long, raven loops and coils of sensuous hair
Rolled turbulence round white-glimpsed neck and throat,
That shamed the moonlight with a rival sheen.

One stooped above her; and his nostrils breathed
Heavy perfumes that blossomed in her hair;
And round her waist hooped one strong arm and drew
Her mightily to him, soft crushing,--cool
With yielding freshness of her form,--her gown;
Then searched her eyes until his own seemed drunk
And mad with passion: then one hungry kiss
Bruised, hard as anger, on her breathless lips,
Fiercer than fire. Leaning lower, then
A whispered, "Lov'st but one? and he?"--And then,
She, with impatience, "Rough and rude thou art!
Why crush me, thou great bear, with such a hug!
Or kill me with such kisses!"--Then, as soft
As some rich rose syllabling musk and dew,
"And whom I love?--ah, Edric, need I say!"...

Then he, fierce-smiling, swiftly, without word,
His countenance harsh-writhen into hate's
Gnarled hideousness, haled back her marvelous head,
Back, back by all its braids of gathered hair,
Till her full bosom's clamorous loveliness
Stark on the moon burst bare. Low leaning then,
With mocking laughter, "Yea, by God's own blood!
The King, O thou adulteress!" and a blade
Glanced, thin as ice, plunged hard, hard in her heart.

MELANCHOLIA

"_Jamque vale Soli cum diceret Ambrociotes,
In Stygios fertur desiluisse lacus,
Morte nihil dignum passus: sed forte Platonis
Divini eximum de nece legit opus._"

--Callimachus.

I

Now there was wind that night, wild wind, and rain;
And frantic thorns, that huddled on the wold,
Seemed withered witches met in storm again
To keep their Sabbath and to curse and scold,
With gnarled, fantastic gestures, lame and old.
Deep in a hollow, where some cabin lay,
A lamplit window, like an eye of gold,
Glared, winked and closed--or was't an Elfin ray,
A jack-o'-lanthorn gleam, lost on a wild wood way?

II

Still I held onward through the ugly night;
Breast-deep in thistles, all their ghostly heads
Kinked close with wet; through the bedraggled plight
Of brakes of bramble, tousled into shreds,
And tangled wastes of briars--tumbling beds
For winds to toss on.--Once, across a farm,
Unsteadily, a lamp towards unseen sheds,--
Like the blurred glow of some ungainly worm,--
A watery wisp of light crawled trailing through the storm.

III

Then swallowing blackness of the night; and thin
The shrewd rain beat me and the rough limbs whipped
Of dwarfed, uneasy beeches. There within
Their savage circle battered tombstones tipped
Squat lengths to weeds the fighting winds had ripped
And chopped to tatters. And I heard before,
Rounding a headland, where the gaunt trees dripped,--
A shout borne deathward from night's ghastly shore,--
Hoarse as a thousand throats the river's sullen roar.

IV

Shuddering I stopped, for, with my feet so caked
With clay, damp-dragging, safer were the graves,
Crowding that vista of the wood,--which raked
My face with burrs,--than, walking towards the waves,
To feel earth slip away; the architraves
Of darkness plunge me downward to some pit
Of wallow and of water.--Madder knaves
Than I have stood thus in a fever-fit
Of heart and brain and shuddered from the brink of it.

V

Wooingly silence whispered to me there
Through boughs of dripping darkness sad with rain;
Darkness, that met my eyeballs everywhere,
Blind-packed and vacant as a madman's brain.
And so I stood and heard the dead leaves drain,
And through the leaves the haunted wind that hissed;
Then suddenly--perhaps it was the strain
Snapped in my temples--laughter seemed to twist,
With evil, night's dead mouth that bent to mine and kissed.

VI

Insanity! two leaves that dabbled down,
Touched me with drizzle; and that laugh--ah, well,
No laugh! an owlet hooting at the frown
Night's hag-face tortures while she works her spell.
Yet I had sworn, before those kisses fell
Like winter on me, black as broken jet,
An occult blackness like the Prince of Hell,
A woman's hand had brushed my face--and yet,
A bat it might have been made mad with wind and wet.

VII

And stark I stood among the sodden stones,
Icy with fever, hearing in each gale
Strange footsteps,--while within my soul were moans
For strength,--as powerless as I was pale.
Then I remembered that within a tale
Once I had read--a chronicle of ills
Cowled monks had written--how one shall not fail
To find, unsought, the Fiend, if so he wills,
Cloak, cap, and cock's crook'd plume among the lonely hills.

VIII

Was _that_ his laugh? and _that_ his vulture hand?--
No! no! for in the legend it was said,
"Though moonless midnight curse the barren land
Sathanas' shadow follows him as red
As Hell's red cauldron is."--My terror fled,
Remembering this.--How sad a fool was I
To dream Hell's wickedness would bow his head
By mine, and parley with me, lie for lie,
With cunning scrutiny of oblong eye by eye!

IX

Then, then I felt--_her_ presence! all awake
Unto her power that could lift or sink;
And her straight eyes controlling, like an ache,
My brain that had no mastery to think,
Or to perform. And slowly, link on link,
She bound me helpless, like an inquisitor,
In vasty dungeons of the soul; no wink
Of light was there, but darkness, bar on bar,
Self-convoluted chaos strangling will's high star.

X

"I am the mother of uneaseful sleep,
The child of night and sister of dim death;
Who knoweth me, yea, he shall never weep,
Yet bless and ban me in a single breath:
Who knoweth me a coward is unneth:
And saddest hearts have sought me over glad
To find gray comfort where the preacher saith
There is no comfort. Melancholy mad,
Reach me thy hand and know me if thy heart be sad."

XI

Thus did she speak. Her voice was like a flame

Of burning blackness. Then I felt the throb
Of her still hand in mine. And so I came
Gladly unto her. Yea, I, too, would rob
Time of his triumphs.--Who would groan and sob
Beneath his fardels, hearing sad men sigh
When here is cure?--for Life, that, like a lob,
Rides us to death; for Love, a godless lie;
And Toil and Hunger.--Yea, what fool would fear to die?

XII

Then seemed I wrapped in rolling mists, and, oh,
Her arm was round me and her kisses dear
On eyes and lips, and words that none may know--
What words of promise said she in mine ear!
Drunk with her beauty still I felt no fear,
When, past the forest, like some bounding brute,
I heard the river roaring. Drawing near,
Again she whispered, and my soul grew mute
Before her voice that lulled like music of a lute:

XIII

"Within the webs of darkness and of day
The spider Hours spin about thy world,
Who now finds time to even laugh or pray,
Cramped in a term of years that are uncurled
Like coils of some huge monster, head uphurled
To fang when the last fold falls! Slope on slope
The night environs thee with space, empearled
With hopeless stars by which men symbol Hope,
Beneath whose light they breed and curse and pray and grope."

XIV

And so she brought me to the river's brink
To plunge me downward. All the night was mine;
And so, exulting, to Death's darker drink
I stooped and drank.--What better drink divine,
O man, hast thou? what wiser way is thine?
Who find'st me carrion on a hungry coast,
Sand in mine eyeballs, in my hair the brine,
And o'er my corpse with bitter lips dost boast--
"Poor fool! poor ghost! Alas! poor, melancholy ghost!"

A WOMAN OF THE WORLD

I

As to my soul--'tis pathos and passion.
As to my life--'t hath a flavor of sin.
What would you have when such is the fashion,
Was and will be of the world we are in?
Yes, I have loved. And have you?--Have you reckoned
The cost of all love?--I can tell you: as much
As a soul!--Is it worth it?--You'll know it that second
You know that you love; and God pity all such!

II

My lover dissembled that ardor's pure beauty.
I endured undeceived nor pretended; and gave
All that his passion demanded--my duty,
For I loved. And the world?--why, I was his slave!--
Should it worry I pleased him?--Propriety sorrowed,
Uprolling her eyes as occasion, and--well,
That lie, overglossed with a modesty borrowed,
Assisted my fall and the end was--I fell.

III

Through love? No; the woman! that visible woman
Men usually know.--None knows how we know
Of an innermore beauty! that part of the human
We designate character.--Look at the bow
Of the moon that is new; that bears in its crescent
A world.--So the flesh gleams the slenderest line
Of soul; that is love; the unevanescent,
Making the mortal immortal, divine.

IV

Yes; I know what I am. Have outlasted my season
Of pleasure and folly.--You think it is strange
That I let you, say--love me? But why not?--my reason
Requires illusions. They give me that change
Which quiets remembrance. You kiss me--I wonder.--
When you say, "You are beautiful,"--well, am I glad
If I laugh?--You declaim on my form, "How no blunder
Of nature discords,"--If I sigh, am I sad?