Chapter II: Part 2

We knew his childish searching meant no harm,
But his own people somehow took alarm;
For when his heart was healed, and he returned
With songs, 'tis said that he and they were burned.
Only this one survived. I put it by
Lest one who lived so much should wholly die.
He tried to spend far more than every day,
And never asked what he would have to pay.
To him a pint of music was a potion
That set him dabbling in some small emotion.
Wherever he could drown he marked an ocean
He got no pleasure but the pains he took
To bring himself to death by one small book
Filled with what he had heard, the babble of a brook.

XII

THE LEGEND OF THE PEASANT

They passed a field of purple _badinjan_.
A peasant raised his head to hear the tune,
And, seeking some excuse for holiday,
He followed humming ballads, this the first:

"It happened say a century ago,
Somewhere between Mazanderan and Fars,
A Frank was in the picture--that I know--
Mud-walls and roses, cypresses and stars,
White dust and shadows black.

"It happened She was loved by more than One,
Though no one now recalls the name and rank
Of even One, whose heart was like the stone
That framed the water of the garden tank
Long gone to utter wrack.

"It happened that one night She had a mind
To roam her garden. Youth was hidden there,
It happened One was watching from behind
A Judas-tree, though neither of the pair
Heard the twigs sigh and crack.

"It happened that next night She wandered out
Once more, and Youth was hiding there again.
And One sprang forth upon them with a shout,
And fanatics and _seyids_ in his train
Streamed in a wolfish pack.

"It happened that the sun found something red
Among the Judas-blossoms where Youth lay
Upon his face; a crow was on his head,
And desert dogs began to sniff and bay
At something in his back.

"It happened that none ever knew Her fate--
Except that She was never heard of more--
Save One, and two that through a secret gate--
Perhaps they knew--a struggling burden bore.
I think it was a sack."

Some one applauded; then the humming drone
Was stung to louder efforts, and went on:

"They staggered down the stiff black avenue,
Hiding the sack's convulsions from the moon,
To drown its cries they feigned the shrill _iouiou_
Of owls, then dropped it in the swift Karûn,
Paused, and admired the view.

"The ripples took her, trying not to leap,
But, copying the uneventful sky,
Serenely burnished where the stream grows deep
They smoothened their staccato lullaby.
And so she fell asleep

"Where no sharp rock disturbs the river bed,
A moving peace, whose eddies turn half-fain
Towards their youth's tumultuous watershed,
And slow blank scutcheons widen like a stain
Portending Sound is dead.

"No herd or village fouls the shining tide,
Till ocean lays a suzerain's armistice
On brawling tributaries. Like a bride
Greeting her lord it laved her with a kiss,
And left her purified.

"But the sea-_Jinn_, who dwell and dress in mauve,
And hunt blind monsters down the corridors
Between sunk vessels--fishers know the drove,
Their horns and conches and the quarry's roars
In autumn--hold that love

"Should meet with more than pardon. So the pack
Spliced up a wand of all the spillikin spars
Flagged with the purple fantasies of wrack,
Composed a spell not one of them could parse,
And tried it on the sack.

"'Twas filled with pearls! Each _Jinni_ dipped his hand,
And scattered trails through labyrinths of ooze,
Or sowed gems thick upon the golden sand,
Festooned a bed from Bahrein to Ormuz,
Muscat to Ras Naband....

"_Hajji_, a deeper meaning than appears
Beneath the surface of my song may lurk
Like _Jinn_. How oft the crown of gathered years,
The dazzling things for which men thank their work,
Are made by Woman's tears."

Tous shook his head and grunted, ceaselessly
The caravan limped onward to the Gulf.

XIII

THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER

Serdar-i-Jang, the Wazir of the west,
Of all mankind had served his country best
By weeding it. The terror of his name
Lapped up the barren Pusht-i-kuh like flame,
Till the Shah smiled: "My other lords of war lose
Battles, but he wrings love from my Baharlus."

He smote them hip and thigh. The man was brave.
Having four wives, he needs must take for slave
Whatever captive baggage crossed his path,
And never feared love for its aftermath.
Thus fared the Wazir while his locks were blue.
The silver in them found him captive too.

The singing caravan in chorus flowed
Past the clay porticoes of his abode.
She came, he saw, was conquered--like a puppet
Drawn to the window, to the street and up it,
Forth to the desert, leaving in the lurch
His pleasant wars and policies to search

For what? He knew not. Haply for the truth
Whose home is open eyes, not dreams or youth.
But this he dimly knew, that something strange,
Beauty, had come within his vision's range;
And a new splendour, running through the world,
Drummed at the postern of his senses, hurled

Him forth, this warrior proud and taciturn,
Footsore upon a pilgrimage to learn
Humility.... These beggars, in whose wake
He toiled, ne'er paused for him to overtake
Their echoes. When at dusk he joined their ring
None rose or bowed. All watched him. Could he sing?

And he could not, for never had he thrown
His days away on verse! He sat alone,
So that his silence stamped him with the badge
Of hanger-on or menial of this _haj_.
Thrust as he would with much unseemly din,
He found no place beside the palanquin,

Till Seyid Rida, scholar of Nejaf,
Took pity on him, saying: "You shall laugh
At these black days when, having served your time,
You share the sovereignty of Persian rhyme.
Be patient, pray to Allah, O my son,
For power of worship. It shall come anon...."

Seyid Rida spoke in vain. The Wazir's place
So far behind the Queen, her perfect face
But half-divined, as Sight denied to Faith,
A doubt lest love itself should be a wraith
Dazzling but mocking him, these stirred his passion
To sworn defiance, to his last Circassian

And thoughts of many a woman taken by force,
Restive and then submissive as a horse.
And now.... He followed in the wake of vision
Lofty and pure as Elburz snows. Derision
Would follow him in turn!... He shook his fist
Toward the feet his soul would fain have kissed:

"Oh, I was born for women, women, women.
Through my still boyhood rang the first alarm;
And since that terror ever fresh invaders
Have occupied and sacked me to their harm.
I am the cockpit where endemic fever
Holds the low country in a broken lease
From waves that ruined dykes appear to welcome.
Only one great emotion spares me--Peace!

"I have grown up for women, women, women;
And suffering has had her fill of me.
My ears still echo with receding laughter,
As shells retain the voices of the sea.
I am the gateway only, not the garden,
That opens from a crowded thoroughfare.
I stand ajar to every passing fancy,
And all have knocked, but none have rested there.

"And I shall die for women, women, women,
But not for love of them. Adventure calls
Or waits with old romance to disappoint me
Behind the promise of surrendered walls.
I am the vessel of some mad explorer,
That sails to seek for treasure in strange lands
Without a steersman in a crew of gallants,
And, finding fortune, ends with empty hands."

A deathly silence fell. Green-turbaned men
Fell noiselessly to sharpening their knives
On their bare hardened feet. Seyid Rida sighed:
"Alas, your heart is set upon reward
For gifts of self. You cannot understand
Love loves for nothing, brother. Those who serve
God the most purely cannot count that He
Will love them in return...."
The Wazir scowled.
But Dreamer-of-the-Age took him aside,
"I would unfold a story like a carpet.
The camel Tous told it to me last night:

"King Suleiman's wives were as jewels, his jewels as stones of the
desert
In number. His concubines herded as desert-gazelles in their grace,
That answered his bidding as meekly as all his wild animal kingdom,
The beasts and the birds and the fishes. Yet the world was as pitch
on his face.

"Now it chanced that the ruler of Saba had news by a merchant of
peacocks
From this king like a hawk-god of Egypt, whose beak was set deep in
the gloom
Of his grape-purple beard, and she said: 'We shall see how his
vanities stead him
When from under the arch of his eyebrows he sees my feet enter his
room.'

"For her feet were far whiter than manna. Her body was white as the
cry
Of a child when the chords of hosanna draw the beauty of holiness
nigh.
The droop of her eyelids would fan a revolt from Baghdad to Lake
Tsana,
Her fingers were veined alabaster. The sprites of her escort would
sigh,

"As they bathed her with sun set in amber and cooled in the snow of
a cloudlet,
And taught her chief eunuch to clamber up moonbeams as fleet as a
ghost:
These, lavish of reed-pipe and tamburine, slaves of the Son of
Daoud, let
Her palanquin down into Zeila--gambouge and magenta, the coast!"

And the Wazir cried, "Ha!" to the rhymes.

"Round the harbour a hoopoe was strutting, for Suleiman's Seal had
appointed
Him messenger-bird, and he thought: 'If I bring the good news of
this beauty,
This Sovereign of Silkiness, I shall harvest great thanks and
promotion.'
So he flew to the Presence and twittered a text on the pleasure of
Duty.

"'Fulfiller of faint Superstition, whose hand rolls the eyeballs of
Thunder,
And lightens forked tongues on a mission of menace to bat or to
eagle!
There comes to your portal a vision whose light shall make Israel
wonder.
Immortal her beauty and mortal her glance that is soft as a
seagull.'"

And the Wazir cried, "Hey!" to the rhymes.

"But Suleiman, sated with women and governance, lifted his beak
From his beard. Naught escaped the magician, not a thought, not a
tone. Ah, he knew
All! He said: 'I have measured your mind as my pity has measured my
people.
We shall speak of reward when she comes; I may live to regret
it--and you!

"'Lo, I am the servant of God, whom I serve as you serve me, not
asking
For pay by each day or each act, but just for the general sum.
The work of the world must be done without wage to be done to our
credit.
We shall profit in claiming our guerdon not by what we are but
become.'

"So the Queen came to Kuddus. Mashallah! Shall a picture be limned
of her coming!
Flushed dancers and lutists athrumming light-limbed as Daoud round
the Ark!
Crushed roadway and crowd-applause rumbled, loud music, hushed
barbarous mumming!
To the cry, 'On to Sion' above her, this lover rode straight at her
mark!"

And the Wazir cried, "Ho!" to the rhymes.

"She had but to flatter the wizard to win him. He said to the
hoopoe:
'I will haggle no more. You shall learn to your cost what the
bargainer buys,
Whose faith levies toll upon duty, whose trust will not serve me on
trust,
Or love for Love. On your head be it.' The hoopoe said:
'_Cheshm_--on my eyes!'

"All other birds fainted with envy, as Suleiman lifted a digit.
Thereon was the Ring-of-most-Magic. Then he spat on the dust from
his bed,
And the miracle came! for the hoopoe went swaggering out of the
presence
(So he struts in his walking to-day) with a crown of pure gold on
his head.

"But the Jews thus learnt avarice. Some one spread news of the
bird-coronation
To the ends of the kingdom. The tribes ran out as one man armed
with lime,
Bows, nets, slings--and slew the hoopoes for the sake of their
crowns. There was profit
In sport then; none other has liked them so well since King
Suleiman's time.

"They divided the spoil till in Israel only our messenger-bird
Survived with two fellows.... He fled to Suleiman's closet for
_bast_,
Sobbing, 'Spare us, O king! Make a sign with the ring that men sing
of! We fare as
Amalekites. If I have sinned, I am punished. We three are the last

"'Of our race. In your grace turn your face to our case. We place
hope in your favour!
My brood is a Yahudi's food. Israel--who disputes it--insane
For gain. We are slain all day long by the strong sons of Cain. Let
us waive our
Gold bane for plain down, lest we drown in our own blood! Discrown
us again!'"

And the Wazir cried, "Hi!" to the rhymes.

"The King made reply. He was sadder than rain in the willows of
Jordan.
'We are God's passing thoughts. They alone that await their
fulfilment are wise.
You shall be for a warning, O hoopoe. I had given you more than
gold-wages
If you had believed we not only had ears, I and Allah, but eyes!

"'Yet giving is fraught with forgiveness. Now therefore the crown
you did covet
Is gone. You are healed of your pride; you shall live till the
Angel of Death errs
From Allah's command. By my Ring-of-most-Magic the gold is
transmuted.
Go forth! He has set for a sign on your brow a tiara of feathers.'

"So the hoopoe went forth in the glory of plumes that he won in
this wise
And wears. Then the hunters, assembled from the uttermost quarters
of Sham, should
Have shot, but did not, for they said: 'What a head! We will not
waste an arrow
On sport of this sort. We are sold! We were told it was gold
and....'"
Tamam Shud

And the Wazir shrieked "Halt!" at the rhymes.

But as he slept that night the Dreamer prayed
That understanding might bedew his head.
And so it was. The fountain of the Dawn
Rose in the whiteness of the month _Rajab_,
Washing the desert stones, and made each body
Shine as the sun-swift chariot of a soul.

While the last swimmer in the sea of slumber,
Out of the deep, its jungled bottom, its ghosts,
Its weight and wonders, rises to the surface
In final breaths of sleep, the Wazir stirred
And flung out joyful arms. Not otherwise
The groping diver in the Gulf of Pearls,
Having achieved adventure, comes to light
And grasps the painted gunwale--with his prize.

"For every hour and day
Of youth that spelled delay
In finding you, I pray
To life for pardon,
I that long since have faced
My task in patient haste:
Out of my former waste
To make your garden.

"With these soiled hands I made
My Self (man's hardest trade).
The sun was _you_: the shade
My toil, my seed did.
I drove my strong soul through
Years in the thought of you,
For whom my garden grew,
And grew unheeded;

"For you, an episode
That lay beside your road,
For me, my long abode,
My will's whole centre.
Lo now my task fulfilled,
Yet not the hope that thrilled
The stubborn realm I tilled
For you to enter.

"Ah, must all sacrifice
Be weighed with balance nice!
To ask the gods our price
Makes all creeds shoddy.
Then should I bargain now--
Troubling my worship--how
You will reward my vow
Of soul and body?

"I have not striven in vain,
Though all my poor domain
Cries daily for your reign.
I hold its treasure,
A source of splendour, known
Haply to me alone,
A boundless love--my own.
Had you but leisure

"To pause beside this spring
A moment, harkening
How through my silence sing
The dreams that here rest,
I yet might make you see
Some of the You in Me.
This song not I but we
Have written, dearest."

Long ropes of stillness joined the caravan
Closer together; no man spoke a word,
Till Dreamer-of-the-Age: "Friend, go up higher
At the Queen's right hand." Seyid Rida smiled:
"I knew you would outrun us." The Wazir
Heard neither fame nor blame, and so was blest
Because he sought praise only of the Queen.

XIV

THE MORAL OF THE SCHOLAR

At Ispahan the notables were met
In conclave. Seyid Rida, scholar scamp--
As Dawlatshah records--perched in the porch:

"Round the table sit the sages--
Different views and different ages--
Secretaries scribble pages,
Taking down each 'er' and 'hem,'
Taking down each word they utter
Like the solemn measured sputter
Of fat raindrops from a gutter.
I speak last of them.

"Outside in the summer weather
Birds are talking all together,
While a tiny pecked-out feather
Flutters past the pane.
Dare you own: The work before us
Seems at moments like their chorus,
Just a little more sonorous,
Similar in strain?

"Have a care! The bird that chatters
Is the only bird that matters,
Heedless of the hand that scatters
Grains of sense or chaff
Mid your Barmecides and Cleons.
I have listened here for æons
To these rooster-flights and pæans.
No one heard me laugh.

"Parrot, jackdaw, jay, and pigeon,
Prose would be the whole religion
Of the Nephelococcygian
State to which you steer.
If the earth remains a youngster
With some waywardness amongst her
Virtues, I should thank the songster
Whom you cannot hear.

"Tits that swing upon a thistle,
Wrens and chats that pipe and whistle,
Join their notes to our epistle,
Where the bee-fraught lime
Orchestrates the lark's espousal
Not of causes but carousal:
Owl, we hear you charge the ouzel
With a waste of time!

"Princeling, a fantastic prophet
Tweaks your robe and bids you doff it,
Offers you escape from Tophet
On the wings of words.
Spread them bravely, fly the town, sell
All you have for this one counsel:
Sing and never mind the groundsel!
Come, we too are birds."

Thereat the conclave fluttered and flew out,
And I have heard them on the Persian roads,
In half-dead cities. History repeats
Nothing except the rose. But Persians say
This was the last they heard of government.

XV

THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH

Alas! 'Twas time to go--"Conceal the wine,
The purple and the yellow infidel!"--
Rice cooked in saffron, honey-cakes, and _mast_
With many-coloured _shirini_ were all
Packed up in paunches capon-lined....
The Queen
Sailed through the city, mounted high on Tous,
Full in the moonlight, purer than the moon,
Whose beauty, being weighed with hers, the scale
Sent up to heaven and left the Queen on earth....

Followed quick tumbles to the lambent street,
Graspings of shoes, and search for garments lost,
With tunes that mounted all awry as flame
Draught-blown, short breaths and straggling feet.
The Dreamer
Reddened and drooped his head; for at the Gate
Sat a portentous Sheikh, thrice great in girth,
Ali-el-Kerbelaï, Known-of-Men,
To whom--he slept all day--his nightly school
Resorted in the porch. He saw, and shrugged
His shoulders, rounded in glory like the hills
That drift and clash about the Gulf of Pearls--
Bahreinis tell the tale lest rival _dhows_
Should venture into trade--and thus held forth:

"Gossips, I have watched fools wander through this gate
In generations. Never have I seen
Men so bewitched by one closed palanquin,
So little fain to chatter with the great,
So blind, or single-eyed, they did not see
Ali-el-Kerbelaï, even me.

"Poor souls! Dusk swamps our wriggling thoroughfares
Like trenches; and I rub my hands to think
How I to-night in coolth shall sleep and drink,
While sunrise takes these vagrants unawares.
Madmen set out each day to beard the sun,
And seventy years ago Your Slave was one.

"When all the world was young, that is when _I_
Was young, I promised Allah to be wise,
And started on the road of enterprise
That leads towards the snow-capped hills of Why,
Passing my hand across my shaven brow
Heavy with all the lower lore of How."

Ali-el-Kerbelaï sighed his soul
Out of his nostrils pious and serene,
For the swift curtain of the night had slid
Along the rings of stillness, as he peered
Into the plain. The singing caravan
Had dwindled slowly to a speck of white.
Then said the sage: "Behold they go to nothing,
These lovers, these far-eyed. To think they passed
Within a foot of wisdom and my robe!
Alas, they passed and knew not. 'Tis the risk
Of all such noisy dreamers. Ah, my head
Pities.... Well, God is great. And God made me.

"Thus first I reached Mohammerah, whose sheikh
In speechless gratitude besought a boon--
To make me eunuch in his _anderûn_--
For I had talked away his stomach-ache.
And of this epoch I need only say
I had fresh dates for dinner every day.

"But I was young. I spurned the unmanly job,
For I loved conquest, and the world lay flat
Before me like a purple praying-mat,
And all young women made my heart _kebob_,
Until the sheikh conceived himself disgraced.
Then I took ship from Basra--in some haste.

"We put to sea, fair sirs, a foul-faced sea
Puckered with viciousness and green with hate
Of all the sons of Adam; and black fate
Conspired with her to take account of me,
For all the _Jinn_ who lurk among the gales
Came down to fecundate our bellied sails.

"They blew. They thrust my skull against the sky,
The jade-backed _Jinn_ disguised as ocean-swell,
But I saw through them.... Down we went to hell,
Where Iblis tried to teach me blasphemy
In vain. No devil's wile could make me speak.
Thus I learned self-control. (I was so weak.)

"We drifted past bare cliff and jungle sedge,
Past spouting loose volcanoes known as whales,
And sirens that blew kisses with their tails,
Till we fell over the horizon's edge,
Fell sheer three thousand parasangs. And there
I first discovered that the world is square.

"We were in China, sir. The Home of Yellows,
Soil, porcelain, manuscripts, men.... Here I spent
Six weeks in stuffing to my heart's content
The thought-scraps given to these whoreson fellows
By heaven. My zeal picked all tradition's locks,
And knowledge opened like a lacquered box

"Wrought with strange figures.... Now I learned by heart
Eleven score ways of dodging every sin.
So, having sucked the marrow from Pekin,
I planned with Allah that I should depart,
And having thus obtained a ruly wind
I shone like lightning through the schools of Hind.

"I shall say little of Hind. Its mouth is wide
With sacred texts and precepts packed in lyrics
For carriage, verse unversed in our empirics.
I grasped all Indian knowledge like a bride
Without a dower, enjoyed and let her go,
Giving God thanks that only Persians _know_."

The singing caravan shrank in a clear
Green sideless tunnel of the firmament.
Ali-el-Kerbelaï paused and watched
Intent, even as by torchlight men spear fish,
While searching flame-reflections brushed and lit
The deep brown-watered caverns of his eyes,
Where dim shapes moved profoundly in the pool.
His listeners watched the sage in ecstasy
Poise, concentrate his massive thought on Nothing,
Heard his _narghilé_ bubble like a brain....

"From Hind to Misr. At Cairo's El-Azhar,
The flower of Moslem scholarship, I sat
Among the Sunni bastards. As a cat
Watches the sun through eyelids scarce ajar,
From dawn till evening prayer I laboured hard,
Lolling in ambush round the great courtyard

"To pounce on wingèd words. Athwart the arcade
Midday in golden bars came clanging down
Upon the anvil of each turbaned crown,
And many minds took refuge in my shade.
I was divinely hard to understand,
Talking until my throat was dry as sand.

"So to the mosque well--into it they pushed
A dog who disagreed with me--and drew
Relief what time the pigeons ceased to coo
Or rustle round its rainbow-juice. We hushed
Our flights of eloquence when my _roghan_
Sizzled complacent in the frying-pan.

"Mashallah, what a life! Yet in this scene
I found a fleck of rust upon my tongue.
Propelled by Fate and my own force of lung,
I flitted with two reverend _Maghrebín_
Whom I had favoured, having learned the trick
Of speaking their foul breed of Arabic.

"Immortal spirits led us, yea the chief
_Afrit_, the crown of all the _Afarit_.
We crossed the great Sahara like a street.
My fame allows me licence to be brief.
Enough. Whatever any sceptic says,
I still maintain I spent a year at Fez.

"Here was a sect that said one God was three.
I plied Moriscos who had tasted two
Beliefs perforce, I even asked a Jew
To make this strange _Tariqah_ clear; but he--
By this judge Christians--he could not explain,
Although his father had been burnt in Spain.

"Ah, how I studied in that narrow city,
Whose walls are changeless as a Persian law,
And full of loopholes. To the seers I saw
Is due the gamut of my human pity.
We stirred the puddles of the human mind
Till none could see the bottom but the blind.

"Now Shaitan tempted me. I fell for once,
A venial sin.... I journeyed to Stamboul
To plumb the errors of the _Greegi_ school.
'Twas there I read the Stagyrite, a dunce,
The Frankish ruler of theology,
And father of a dunce, Alfarabi.

"I laid him low and hurried home to indite
A book, the fruit of all my Thought and Travel,
Entitled 'Contemplation of the Navel,'
A mystic book. (But first I learned to write.)
Such of our doctors as can read have read it.
But I was bent on even higher credit.

"I sought a cave whence madmen hunt wild sheep,
And there for thirteen years I held my head,
Until the dupes decided I was dead.
Indeed I spent the better part in sleep,
Lest I should be beguiled from abstract chatter
By lust for this world's striped and dazzling matter.

"Night brought me counsel, and a pock-marked Kurd
Or angels brought me food. Day spared my dreams
That tilled the solitude like slow white teams
Of oxen, till it blossomed, and I heard
The Roc's huge pinions scour the starry cobbles;
And so I rose above all human squabbles.

"For me the burning haze made sandhills dance,
Till blushing shadows covered their nude breasts.
The eternal heirs of leisure were my guests,
And feasted on my glory in advance.
Then on an eve among the eves.... The End!
My soul sat by me talking as a friend.

"I bleached my beard, and came to Ispahan.
You know the rest. To Allah's will I bowed
In suffering the plaudits of the crowd,
For all must listen; those must preach who can.
I stirred the town with fingers raised to bless....
And gauged the people by my emptiness."

The caravan was gone. Its song survived
A little, faint, an echo, not at all.
Then like a magic carpet warmth was drawn
Back into heaven, and left behind a void
Where thin-faced breezes, huddling from the hills,
Sat down to breathe hard tales upon their hands.
And suddenly earth looked her age. Like her
The shapes round Ali-el-Kerbelaï shivered,
Pulling their coloured _abbas_ to their ears
And drawing in their feet. At last one spoke:
"O master, you to whom the world is known,
What is your thought's conclusion, what the sum
Of added knowledge in the tome of YOU?"
And Ali answered weighing out his words:

"Sir, I have seen the East and West, great peace,
Great wars, indifferent fates that blessed or cursed
Their builders. I have touched the best and worst
In flesh and thought, have watched flames rise and cease,
Consoled high hopes, deep passions, men that die
For things beneath the earth, behind the sky,

"For god or woman. I have counted change
For the Sarraf of Changelessness, have marked
Kings, Wazirs, coursed by sons of dogs that barked
And bit, the uninhabitable range
Of power, where all that climb in others' shoes
Are honoured and unperched like cockatoos.

"Now having known mankind in hell and bliss
Through thrice a generation, I have formed
From all the problems I besieged or stormed
One firm conviction, only one! 'Tis this:
The Faith, the Pomp, the Loves, the Lives of men
Outshine the firefly and outcrest the wren."

He added as he rose: "But God is great."
And bent, repassing through the city gate,
Lest he should bump his venerable pate.

XVI

THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC

Beside the Sufis ran a whited wall.
Two cypress-trees peeped over from the waist,
Stiff, motionless as toys. Among their spires
A lithe voice mounted and leaned down again:

"Come, for to-night the hills are all white marble
Under a sapphire dome,
Where bats scrawl riddles which the bulbuls garble
For owls to answer. Come.

"The air is sick of moon-discoloured roses,
The plain stagnates like some
Weird archipelago of garden-closes
And dead, bleached waters. Come.

"O night of miracles! Come, let us wander
Over this ghostly sea
To that dark cypress-circled island yonder,
In whose clear centre we

"Will lie and float in phosphorescent ether.
Thank heaven that night is cool
As day was scorching. Let us watch together
The lovers in the pool.

"Look in! Lie still! A jewelled ripple spangles
The hand upon her hair;
While, lying listless on her back, she dangles
A finger in the air.

"How still he is. Your motionless perfection
Absorbs him utterly.
Doubtless you seem to him his love's reflection
Face downwards in the sky,

"Whence I am hanging, seeing only her face,
As he sees only yours.
Lean down! And they shall meet us at the surface.
O silent paramours

"We bring to you, by stealth, while men are sleeping,
A gift. Let your domain
Have it for ever in its steadfast keeping;
We shall not come again.

"We bring our shadows: just the fleeting semblance
Of human love. O might
Your waters hold them for us in remembrance
Of one short summer night!

"A wondrous night, when two reflections hovered,
Dreaming of love aloud
Here by the pool, until the moon was covered
By an impending cloud;

"And then they lost each other. Where but lately
The magic mirror shone,
A wider shadow, cruelly, sedately,
Passes ... and we are gone."

The Dreamer stayed: "Who speaks of passing here?
The river passes, passes to the sea,
Drawing in rills the voices of the earth
To make its voice that merges in the swell.
The river passes and the boatman's chant
Is swallowed up in distance and the night.
Or is it, friend, the boats alone that pass?
The river, as I sometimes think, remains.
Even so it is with lovers and with love.
Then sing us something wise where laughter lurks,
As underneath the desert, from the hills
Whence cometh help, the hidden water-course
Chuckles. Upon this thread your garden hangs.
Nay, never shake that cypress head! We need
Not only sun but cloud and tears to build
Laughter, the rainbow of the inner man."
But the voice answered, or the cypress sighed:

"I am the brain of Hitherto.
In darkness I revolve and flash.
Books are the fortune I ran through.
My painted pen-case, yellow hue
And yellow sash

"Were famed from Yezd to Yezdikhast.
I taught what space and learned what mud is.
My metaphysics were my past.
Alas, I left my lust till last
Of all my studies.

"I kept my mind so clear and keen
By grinding guesswork into saws,
You scarce could fit a meal between
The triumphs of my thought-machine,
Its puissant jaws.

"The process of my intellect,
Mazed by the clapping hands that fed it,
Rolled on. They, founding a new sect
On premises that I had wrecked,
Gave me the credit.

"And so I used my fame to part
Man from his planks to sink or swim;
I plumbed his shallows, drew the chart....
Illusions broke the blacksmith's heart.
I envied him

"Suddenly, and set out to moon
About this garden scholarwise.
One silver laugh, two silken shoon,
To fill my empty _anderûn_
With splendid lies

"I ask of shadows, battering
My bars, and wonder why I ache.
O You who made both cage and wing,
Let me redeem my toilsome spring
By one mistake."

In the parched road the Dreamer took his lute
And tossed these chords across the battlement:

"The myrtles of Damascus,
The willows of Gilan,
Have sent the breeze to ask us
If aught but sceptics can
Deny the spirit calling
To flesh--we are the call--
And save themselves from falling
Behind a whited wall.

"Most pure was Abu Bakr,
And Allah speeds the plough
That furrows young wiseacre
Across an open brow.
Most fair is self-possession--
Give me the open road--
But Solomon in session
Went mad and wrote an ode.

"All fields of thought are arid,
No earthly soil is rich,
By thirst of knowledge harried
And those ambitions which
The heart like Pharaoh's harden
To let no impulse go.
But every yard's a garden
Through which we mystics flow.

"I conjure hawthorn blossom
From Bakhtiari vales--
As when one looks across some
Choked channel where the sails
Of anchored vessels jostle--
I tune their rhythmic sway
In hollows where the throstle
Is only dumb by day.

"Red routs of rhododendron,
That slope to Trebizond,
Rapt round the garden's end run
To mask the waste beyond.
There facts are free to wonder
Down pathways like the streak
Of silver pavement under
The palms of Basra creek.

"In charity of jasmin
My poor designs are clad,
As nature cloaked the chasm in
The ramparts of Baghdad,
Where passed the fabled Caliph
With Giafar by night
To mystify the bailiff
At Garden-of-Delight.

"The orchard-grave of Omar,
Neglected Nishapur,
Where sprays of petaled foam are,
Sighs through my garden-door
With boughs round whose gnarled stem men
Had never thought to twine
Green tendrils from rich Yemen,
The sunburnt Smyrniot vine.

"Wild lilies, whose rich red owes
Its undertone to brown,
From Kurd-betented meadows
Break out in every town.
Blind alleys' bursts of lilac,
Where russet warblers woo,
Are set to cover my lack
Of vocal retinue.

"The myrtles of Damascus,
The poppies of Shiraz,
Have sent the breeze to ask us
If they are dumb, because
Wisdom and one that had her
To wife still hug the fence,
Where we have left a ladder
To rescue men from sense."

The cypress swayed. Hard by another voice
Climbed the twin tree, and thus its theme began:

"Young man, Shirín is out of date.
We have to thank the West
That Attar's latest is too late
To waken Interest,
And one of Love's great names, Majnûn,
Is now generic for a loon.

"Our crust is cooling, and the bent
For culture bears its fruit,
As we that weed out sentiment
Likewise outgrow the brute;
While Providence matures a blend
That pure philosophers commend

"In logic. Constancy declined
Because we pruned our morals.
Love practises the change of mind
That ethics preach in quarrels...."

There cried the Dreamer: "Who are you that mock
Exiles in search of that from which they came,
Intent to know themselves and so the Lord
Whose ways are as the number of men's souls?
By these we compass our escape from Self,
The mirage in the waste through which we pass
Across the bridge Phantasmal to the Real;
Until, forgetting Self, we see in All
The Loved that leads us to the eternal beauty
Shown in a thousand mirrors yet but one.
These are the Sufi tenets. What of you?"
From the first tree the quavering voice replied:

"It is my double, Peder Sag,
The summit of the civilized
Above such heats as woman or flag.
It is my double, Peder Sag,
Who bows the poet to the wag,
The hero to the undersized.
It is my double, Peder Sag,
The summit of the civilized.

"His mission is to educate
By atrophy, the cure for spasm,
And so to serve the future state.
His mission is to educate
A world of fellowships that hate
One living thing--enthusiasm.
His mission is to educate
By atrophy, the cure for spasm.

"He dresses us in faultless drab.
His colour-scheme for you is tan,
And, level as a marble slab,
He dresses us in faultless drab.
Him urchins call Abu Kilab:
The Father-of-the-Modern-Man.
He dresses us in faultless drab.
His colour-scheme for you is tan.

"My double did a deal for truth.
He teaches balance to the Young,
And knows a better thing than youth.
My double did a deal for truth,
His emblem is the wisdom tooth,
A flowery and fruitless tongue.
My double did a deal for truth.
He teaches balance to the Young."

Serdar-i-Jang impatient pulled his beard
And growling Tous his bridle: "Let him be
The fool I was, and so mine enemy
From whom I part in peace." Farid Bahadur
Shrugged that: "Our wares are not for such as these."

Once more the Brain: "I might have come with you,
Leaving my gloomy castle in the air,
For, overgrown with tangles, in its flank
Lies hid the thrice-veiled door of happiness;
Only--my double has mislaid the key."

Seyid Rida laughed and answered: "We have found it."
The Lover knocked: "'Tis I!"
The Loved One made reply:
"There is no room for two
Beyond the Gateway."
In solitude he learned
The Secret; so returned
Saying: "O Love, 'tis you."
And entered straightway.

A wicket opened gently of itself,
And so a sceptic joined the caravan.

XVII

THE PRIDE OF THE TAILOR

Oh, sliding down the desert from Shiraz
The tailor-man from Meshed tore his hose:
A crowning test, a broken man! "Ah, was
I born that fate might practise fancy-blows?

"The road is rougher than a magnate's mirth
Toward the humble, long as a bad debt.
I cannot dream of any woman worth
This cloth. To me 'twas dearer than a pet."

Then Dreamer-of-the-Age cried: "Bring me thread
Strong as the bridge as they call Pul-i-Katûn!
For Meshed's champion tailor-man is dead
Unless his wounded pride be succoured soon."

Launched on the seaward slope the pilgrims went
On to the gulf, and heard, athwart the dim
Night echoing, a sufferer's lament
And Dreamer-of-the-Age consoling him:

"The night fits down on the desert, brother;
We are drawn there-through like a piece of thread.
The steepened sky and the vastness smother
Uneasy sleep in her league-wide bed.
Rocked to and fro with a camel's burden
On broken tracks, that are thin as scars,
We near the Gulf. Have we seen our guerdon?"
"Yea, every night we have seen the stars."

"The dust is thick, and our own feet raise it.
Our eyes were clear did our feet but rest.
We give our heart and no sign repays it.
What need we ever a further test!
We drift along with the old dumb neighbour
In the old blind alley we call our goal,
Hope: all that comes of a soul's life-labour."
"It was the labour that made the soul."

"We stride ahead, but in every village
A brother faints and a weakness falls.
The tribes that till and the tribes that pillage
Are reconciled with the life that palls.
Oh, townsmen tread to a fixed thanksgiving,
But what of us, if these pitying throngs
Should ask the end of our harder living?"
"God knows the answer. They know our songs,

"The coloured patch on the background, Silence,
The gleaming thought that is Love's to wear
Undimmed through space to a myriad-while hence.
Could the hands be worthy that knew not care
To weave Love's garb? Though we needs must suffer,
Shall we sing the worse that we sing in vain?
Our songs shall rise as the road grows rougher.
In the breathless hills, in the fevered plain,

"They mount as sparks from the night's oases,
And fall far short of the idol's feet.
They are stored by God in his secret places,
The least-lit stars of his darkest street.
Yet ten worlds hence they shall dance, my brother,
To travelling winds.... If our songs were worth
One gleam of light to the Way of Another,
We bless the sorrow that gave them birth."

XVIII

THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURER

So to the journey's end. The Gulf was there
Steaming and soundless, and the weary feet
Were stayed at last from following the Queen.
The great _dhow_ nosed the creek; slow water lapped
About her burnished; burnished in her sat
Unmoving bronze, her oarsmen. Then they rose:
"Hail, Bringers of the Queen!" "Hail, ship! you bear
What cargo hence?" "We carry on your charge."
"But leave us nothing--nothing in exchange?"
"Only the ancient story of a slave.
There lies a secret buried none too deep."

Thus the chief rower. This the far-off tale.

I dwelled beside the impulsive Rhone, a child that loved to be
alone.
The forest was my nursery. My happiness was all my own.

I knew by name each cloud that lowers the sunshine through in
liquid showers.
Deep in the tangled undergrowth I caught the singing of the
flowers.

Our minstrels sang of rape and arson, all the joys of private wars.
The forest wall was calm and tall. My tutor laughed, and drank to
Mars.

Bald, vulture-like upon its perch, our crag-born castle seemed to
search
The gorge for prey, its shade to still the bells a-twitter in the
church

Where, cheek by jowl with fearsome fowl and gargoyle, ghostly men,
in foul
Incense that tried to stifle me, recited magic formulæ.

At home clanked metal psalm and spur; but, oh the woods ...! I
tried to tame
A wolf-cub that the gardener called Life. He knew. The preacher
came.

I see him yet, his visage wet with hot emotion, tears, and sweat.
Contorted in the market-place he shrieked that all must pay a debt

To one Jehovah and His Son, by bursting eastward as the Hun
Had scourged the West. In unison we all replied 'twere nobly done,

For he explained that heaven was gained more featly--wrenching
Saint Jerome--
From Palestine than Christendom. That night no peasant durst go
home.

His words were like a wind that fanned a grass-fire: God would lend
His hand
To purge away the infidel whose breath profaned the Holy Land.

He showered indulgences, and kissed the brows of those who would
enlist
To take a chance of martyrdom or give the devil's tail a twist.

He promised we should see the light, that cursèd Arabs could not
fight,
Counted them dead since we were "led by General Jesus," said the
pope.

Moreover we must win and use Christ, His true Cross, the Widow's
cruse,
All talismans that found no scope for miracles among the Jews.

Upon the walls the veriest dolt and clown, arow like birds that
moult,
Chattered with one accord--or some small priestly prompting:--
"Diex el volt."

No wonder that our heartstrings glowed within us like a smelted
lode
Whence Kobolds welded Durandal; and like one man we ran or rode

Forth. Were we not enchanted? This was first among God's
certainties.
Even our steeds were like Shabdíz, the pride of King Khusraw
Parvíz.

We saw our path made plain, the hills removed by faith, whose
foaming course
Flooded the continents like flats. We saw the world made one--by
force.

In ecstasy our spirits soared. With beatific face toward
My cloudland all the crowd shed tears, and vowed to serve and save
the Lord.

But cloudland, seeming to disdain such warmth, replied with
slapping rain.
Conjuring such black augury the monks recited formulæ.

Besides, lest women, priests and traders should tempt the appetite
of raiders,
The Church proclaimed the Truce of God. Not all our barons were
crusaders.

Those who were frightened not to go sold all they had to make a
show,
Land, tool and ware to pay a fare. The panic made sly kings its
heir.

So much was sold by young and old, by fond, ambitious, hot and
cold,
That steel took sudden silver wings, then flew beyond the reach of
gold.

In such a gust my tender age availed not with the preaching sage,
For I was born of fighting men; and one of them took me for page,

Though I was loth to go, and prayed for mercy and a little maid
Whose hair was shining sunflower brown. I thought of all the games
we played

All day with hay and idle mowers. She dubbed me knight in pixy
bowers,
Where in the hindering undergrowth I caught the singing of the
flowers,

Ah me, how distant!... I was blest in my young lord who shared the
test,
Being sent upon this pilgrimage, his snow-white love still
unpossessed.

He, too, was paler than a ghost, as though already all were lost.
She dreamed of empery for him. He taught me this to show the cost:

_My heart was mine.
Ambition kept it whole.
I gained the world,
And so I lost my soul._

_Then you were mine,
But only mine in part.
You loved the world,
And so I lost my heart._

Only my tutor lay abed, calling us savages, and read
His pagan books. The fever would abate, he sneered, when we were
bled.

He chilled me. His head was like a block of ice, so clear. He tried
to shock
Me with his whispered flings that saints and monarchs came of
laughing-stock,

Or boasted some loud organ, Reason, which doctors had confused with
treason,
Looked round lest walls should hear, then wept that he was one born
out of season.

Our preaching-man pronounced a ban upon him, cried good riddance:
he
Was like to lead young men astray because he knew geography,

(And sciences, as medicine, reduce the value of a shrine).
My tutor passed for riding gnomes through space upon a pack of
tomes.

But at the water-parting I waved to the castle green and dun,
A tapestry where liquid sun--or tears--had made the colours run.

I looked my last on every stone and tree to whom my face was known.
The warriors smiled and called me child. They had not understood
the Rhone,

Nor that I _loved_ the birchwood's skin, the pansy's face, the
sheep-dog's grin,
That sleep with Nature in a field was sweet to me as mortal sin.

For love so fierce I stole: I gave my summer holidays to save
Lambs from the butcher, built for them sanctuary at my wolf-cub's
grave.

I stroked the landscape like a lute. No scentless words, no colours
mute,
Could paint its music. Henceforth I had only heaven for substitute.

Sling, crossbow, bludgeon, axe and spud, cilice and vials of sacred
blood,
On such equipment we relied. Our foes were misery and mud.

Each Norman keep, each Frankish hold, each corner of the Christian
fold
Sent forth its sheep to sound of bells. Our prophets might have had
them tolled.

Prince, abbot, squire, felt the desire of bliss that swept stews,
taverns, farms.
Soft damosels ploughed through the mire with babe at breast and
men-at-arms;

And, since this journey was the price of entrance into Paradise,
The gaols belched out their criminals and beggars all alive with
lice.

We took no food, for God is good; besides we heard that convents
strewed
Converted Hungary for us. We never dared mistrust His mood.

Heading the mass far up the pass, that led us straight to Calvary,
The preaching-man upon an ass recited magic formulæ.

Soon we were joined by northern lords; no few among their folk had
swords.
(Walter the Pennyless his rout had gone before and died in hordes,

While Gotschalk's dupes, with geese and goats upon their flags, had
found the boats
To pass beyond the Bosphorus, where Kilidj Arslan cut their
throats.)

Our force could not await the Turk, but in its ardour got to work
That was not mentioned in the breves. It murdered all the Jews in
Treves.

And I was sad a Christian lad should march with myrmidons so mad.
They made our Holy War appear too near a Musulman Jehad.

We plodded on for many weeks through mazes where the Austrian ekes
A bare existence on the slips of alp below the granite peaks,

And all those weeks did naught betide us palmers save that many
died.
Our gaol-birds eyed the preaching-man, and scholars spoke of
vaticide;

But I was happy when our stout commander sent me on to scout.
I cried for little Sunflower-tress, and made strange faces at the
trout.

Because I was a fighting-man I trained myself to nettle-stings,
And copied oaths and made up things my tutor would have tried to
scan:

_Briar and bramble,
Don't be so dense.
You scratch and you scramble
Like things without sense.
Why grudge me a ramble?
You can't want my hose,
White-coated bramble,
Pink briar-rose._

_Bramble and briar,
Leave me alone.
Cling to the friar,
Make him your own.
Kiss him, the liar
Who brought us all here,
Gentle sweet-briar,
Bramble my dear._

Thus through the months of slapping rain we plunged into the
Hungarian plain,
And paid its mounted bowmen dear for wretched stocks of fruit and
grain,

Or shelter in a reed-built town. They asked for hostages. We gave
Our leaders to these dirty-brown mongrels, who brought us to the
Save

With loss. My tutor's Damocles perhaps had lived in times like
these;
For whoso straggled from the main body was never seen again.

Ere this my rhyme had spread, and swelled into a marching-song. I
blushed
To witness how the spearmen held their sides with laughter, as they
yelled

"Bramble and briar." 'Twas the first faint mutiny. These men of
Gaul
Bantered the sterner pilgrims so I wondered why they came at all.

Yea, often now that I am old and hear how zealous scribes have told
The zeal that made the first crusade, well--history is eaten cold.

My lord could think of nothing but the lady who had bidden him cut
His way to her by such detours. Aye, this was true romance--the
slut.

We called her secretly The Burr--whereof was plenty in our beds--
For night by night he crooned of her, nor even named the Sepulchre:

_I waited, and the hours were loth to close.
They scarcely stirred till evening leapt to sight
Between the shadows that all substance throws
As bridges for its passage to the night._

_You never came. Life dozes at the touch
Of those not wholly resolute to live,
Who let themselves mistrust her overmuch
To take the only thing she has to give._

Amid the rags there caracoled fop-penitents whose panders lolled
With human baggage in the rear, and hound and hawk. So chaos rolled

Adown the Danube rolling east. Beyond Semlin the pinewoods filled
With Celt and Saxon, man and beast inspired to leave the west
untilled.

The locust-swarms were better drilled than we, the owls were not so
blind.
At every stage we left behind poor simpletons that moaned and
shrilled,

Thinking each swamp Gethsemane. It seemed that at their agony
The doctors scoffed with cross aloft, reciting magic formulæ.

Alone the princes lightly pranced, as if the pilgrimage enhanced
Their right to weigh upon the world thereafter. So the doom
advanced

To dervish cries and jester's japes. Hermit and boor and
jackanapes,
I and my ghost-pale master threw a trail of shadows, motley shapes,

Where Rhodopé's wine-purples mix snow with the moonlight. Oh, 'twas
gall
Amid the horror of it all that Bulgars thought us lunatics,

Or worse; for ever at our flank a stream, that in my nostrils
stank,
Seethed; and amid the best of her the scum of Europe wenched and
drank.

At last we halted where Constantinople's grandeur puts to scorn
The villaged west, and challenges the Orient on her Golden Horn.

Ah, brazen, were your heart as strong as looked your square-chinned
ramparts.... Long
We waited at the gates in dust knee-deep. The Emperor did not trust

The help that he had craved. He swore he had not asked so many ...
more
Would ruin him.... He let the heat suck out our strength at every
pore.

But we were told great noblemen, Godfrey of Bouillon in Ardennes,
Robert of Flanders, "Sword and Lance of Christians," all the flower
of France

Were on our side, Hugh Vermandois, Stephen of Chartres and Troyes
and Blois,
Baldwin and Raymond of Toulouse. The preacher said we could not
lose.

Moreover he had spoken with angel-reserves behind us, sith
They sent assurance (Saracens we mocked, but had our own _Hadith_)

That we should root the heathen out, and blight as with a ten
years' drought
Their fields. Jehovah willed that we should leave no seed of theirs
to sprout.

Our mates streamed in from lands beyond the Adriatic, Bohemond
With Tancred; strait Dalmatian bays, Epirus, Scodra, devious ways

Bore them with boastful tales of sport and plunder, and a vague
report
That this was nothing to the spoil that beckoned from the Moslem
court.

Henceforth impatient ups and downs possessed us. Asiatic towns
Flamed to the general vision. We heard less perhaps of heavenly
crowns

Than flowers and peacocks made of gems, the Caliph's crusted
diadems
That crushed the head like Guthlac's bell, and trees with solid
emerald stems.

And I confess Christ counted less to us than tales of leash and
gess,
Or Hárún-el-Rashíd's largesse that sent the clock to Charlemagne.

We practised sums, and tried to train our cavalry in loss and gain.
Upon the misty wizard-world rose like a star the money-brain.