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Title: The Singing Caravan A Sufi Tale Author: Robert Vansittart Release Date: July 7, 2015 [EBook #49385] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SINGING CARAVAN *** Produced by Emmanuel Ackerman, University of California Libraries, Microsoft (scanning) and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ _FICTION_ THE GATES JOHN STUART _VERSE_ SONGS AND SATIRES _THEATRE_ LES PARIAHS THE CAP AND BELLS PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES CLASS _THEATRE IN VERSE_ FOOLERY DUSK THE SINGING CARAVAN _RECENT POETRY_ THE HEART OF PEACE By LAURENCE HOUSMAN. 5s. net ESCAPE AND FANTASY By GEORGE ROSTREVOR. 3s. 6d. net THE SAILING SHIPS By ENID BAGNOLD. 5s. net COUNTER-ATTACK By SIEGFRIED SASSOON. 2s. 6d. net POEMS By GEOFFREY DEARMER. 2s. 6d. net THE SINGING CARAVAN A SUFI TALE BY ROBERT VANSITTART Each man is many as a caravan; His straggling selves collect in tales like these. Only the love of one can make him one. Who takes the Sufi Way--the Way of Peace? NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 1919 _Printed in Great Britain_ _IN MEMORIAM_ MY BROTHER ARNOLD 2ND LIEUTENANT, 11TH HUSSARS KILLED IN ACTION NEAR YPRES MAY 1915 _In twenty years of lands and seas and cities I had small joy and sought for it the more, Thinking: "If ever I am polymetis, 'Tis yours to draw upon the hard-won store."_ _I had some bouts from Samarkand to Paris, And took some falls 'twixt Sweden and Sudan. If I was slow and patient learning parries, I hoped to teach you when you were a man._ _I cannot fall to whining round the threshold Where Death awaited you. I lack the skill Of hands for ever working out a fresh hold On life. In mystic ways I serve you still._ _The age of miracles is not yet ended. As on the humble feast of Galilee Surely a touch of heaven has descended On the cheap earthen vessel, even on me,_ _Whose weak content--the soul I travail under-- Unstable as water, to myself untrue, God's mercy makes an everlasting wonder, Stronger than life or death, my love of you._ I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Humphreys, Mr. John Murray, and the Editor of the _Spectator_ for kind permission to reproduce a few of the shorter poems in this tale of Persian mystics. I have included them, firstly, because I wished otherwise new work, being a memorial, to include such fragments of the past as might be worth preserving; secondly, because decreasing leisure inspires a diffidence in the future that may justify me in asking a reader or a friend to judge or remember me only by "Foolery" and "The Singing Caravan." R. V. CONTENTS PAGE IN MEMORIAM vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii PRELUDE 1 I. THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN 9 II. THE JOY OF THE WORDS 15 III. THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT 17 IV. THE INWARDNESS OF THE MERCHANT 20 V. THE LESSON OF THE CAMEL 22 VI. THE BOASTING OF YOUTH 28 VII. THE HEART OF THE SLAVE 33 VIII. THE TALE OF THE CHEAPJACK 37 IX. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DOOR 39 X. THE SONG OF THE SELVES 49 XI. THE STORY OF THE SUTLER 57 XII. THE LEGEND OF THE PEASANT 62 XIII. THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER 66 XIV. THE MORAL OF THE SCHOLAR 78 XV. THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH 81 XVI. THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC 90 XVII. THE PRIDE OF THE TAILOR 100 XVIII. THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURER 103 XIX. FUSION 161 XX. LONG LEAVE 167 EPILOGUE 169 PRELUDE The sun smote Elburz like a gong. Slow down the mountain's molten face Zigzagged the caravan of song. Time was its slave and went its pace. It bore a white Transcaspian Queen Whose barque had touched at Enzeli. Splendid in jewelled palanquin She cleft Iran from sea to sea, Bound for the Persian Gulf of Pearls, Where demons sail for drifting isles With bodyguards of dancing girls And four tamed winds for music, smiles For passports. Thus the caravan, Singing from chief to _charvadar_, Reached the great gate of screened Tehran. The burrows of the dim bazaar Swarmed thick to see the vision pass On broidered camels like a fleet Of swaying silence. One there was Who joined the strangers in the street. They called him Dreamer-of-the-Age, The least of Allah's _Muslimeen_ Who knew the joys of pilgrimage And wore the sign of sacred green, A poet, poor and wistful-eyed. Him all the beauty and the song Drew by swift magic to her side, And in a trance he went along Past friends who questioned of his goal: "The Brazen Cliffs? The Realms of Musk? Goes he to Mecca for his soul?..." The town-light dwindled in the dusk Behind. Ahead Misr? El Katif? The moon far up a brine-green sky Made Demavend a huge pale reef Set in an ocean long gone dry. Bleached mosques like dwarf cave-stalagmites, Smooth silver-bouldered _biyaban_ And sevenfold velvet of white nights Vied with the singing caravan To make her pathway plain. Then one Beside the poet murmured low: "I plod behind, sun after sun, O master, whither do we go? "Are we for some palmed port of Fars, Or tombed Kerbela, or Baghdad The Town-of-Knowledge-of-the-Stars? Is worship wise or are we mad?" Answered the poet: "Do we ask Allah to buy each Friday's throng? None to whom worship is a task Should join the caravan of song. "With heart and eyes unquestioning, friend, We follow love from sea to sea, And Love and Prayer have common end: 'May God be merciful to me!'" So fared they, camped from noon to even, Till dawn, quick-groping through the gloom, Pounced on gilt planets low in heaven. Thus they beheld the domes of Kum. And onward nightly. Though the dust Swirled in dread shapes of desert _Jinn_, Ever the footsore poet's trust Soared to the jewelled palanquin, Parched, but still singing: "God, being great, Lent me a star from sea to sea, The drop in his hand-hollow, Fate. He holds it high, and signs to me "Although She--She may not ..." "For thirst My songs and dreams like mirage fail. Yea, mad "--his fellow pilgrim cursed-- "I was. The Queen lifts not her veil." "Put no conditions to her glance, O happy desert, where the guide Is Love's own self, Life's only chance ..." He saw not where the other died, But pressed on strongly, loth to halt At Persia's pride, Rose-Ispahan, Whose hawks are bathed in pure cobalt. To meet the singing caravan Came henna-bearded prince and sage With henna-fingered _houris_, who Strove to retard the pilgrimage, Saying: "Our streets are fair and you "A poet. Sing of us instead. God may be good, but life is short. Yon are the mountains of the dead. Here are clean robes to wear at court." He said: "I seek a bliss beyond The range of your _muezzin_-call. Do birds cease song till heaven respond? The road is naught. The Hope is all." "You know not this Transcaspian Queen, Or what the journey's end may be. Fool among Allah's _Muslimeen_, You chase a myth from sea to sea." "Because I bargain not nor guess If Waste or Garden wait for me, Love gives me inner loveliness. I hold to her from sea to sea." So he was gone, nor seemed to care For beckoning shade, or boasting brook, Or human alabaster-ware Flaunted before him in the _suk_, Nor paused at sunburnt far Shiraz, The home of sinful yellow wine, Where morning mists, like violet gauze, Deck the bare hills, and blossoms twine In seething coloured foam around The lighthouse minarets. And sheer-- A thin cascade bereft of sound-- The track falls down to dank Bushir. The caravan slipped to the plain. Its song rose through the rising damp, Till, through the grey stockade of rain, The Gulf of Pearls shone like a lamp. Here waiting rode a giant _dhow_, Each hand a captive _Roumi_ lord, Who rose despite his chains to bow As straight her beauty went aboard, Sailed. For the Tableland of Rhyme? The Crystal Archipelago? Who knows! This happened on a time Among the times of long ago. He only, Dreamer-of-the-Age, Was left alone upon the sands, The goal of his long pilgrimage, The soil of all the promised lands, Watching the _dhow_ cut like a sword The leaden waves. Yet, ere she sailed, God poured on broken eyes reward Out of Heaven's heart. The Queen unveiled. There for a space fulfilment shone, While worship had his soul for priest And altar. Then the light was gone, And on the sea the singing ceased. * * * * * And is this all my story? Yes, Save that the _Sufi's_ dream is true. Dearest, in its deep lowliness This tale is told of me and you. O love of mine, while I have breath, Whatever my last fate shall be, I seek you, you alone, till death With all my life--from sea to sea. And God be merciful to me. I THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN The pilgrims from the north Beat on the southern gate All eager to set forth, In little mood to wait While watchman Abdelal Expounded the Koran To that wise seneschal, His mate, Ghaffir Sultan. At length Ghaffir: "Enough!" Even watchmen's heads may nod. "Asraeil is not rough If we have faith in God." His fellow tapped the book: The _Darawish_ discuss The point you overlook: Has Allah faith in us? Know, then, that Allah, fresh And splendid as a boy Who thinks no ill of flesh, Had one desire: a toy. And so he took for site To build his perfect plan The Earth, where His delight Was manufactured: Man. Ah, had we ever seen The draft, our Maker's spit, I think we must have been Drawn to live up to it. God was so pure and kind He showed Shaitan the lease Of earth that He had signed For us, His masterpiece. The pilgrims cried: "You flout Our calm. Beware. It flags. Unbar and let us out, Sons of a thousand rags." And Abdelal said: "Hark! Methought I heard a din." Said Ghaffir: "After dark I let no devils in. "Proceed." He sucked his pipe: God in His happiest mood Laid down our prototype, And saw that man was good. Aglow with generous pride: "Shaitan the son of Jann, This is my crown," He cried. "Bow down and worship man." Said Evil with a smirk-- He was too sly to hiss-- "I cannot praise your work. I could have bettered this." God said: "I could have sown The soil my puppet delves, Yet rather gave my own Power to perfect themselves." Still the fiend stiffened. "I Bow not." Our prophet saith That he would not comply Because he had no faith In us. He only saw The worst of Allah's toy, The springs, some surface flaw, The strengthening alloy. Said God: "The faults are mine. I gave him hope and doubt, The mind that my design Shall have to work Me out. What though he fall! Is love So faint that I should grieve? How else, friend, should I prove To him that I believe? "And how else should he rise? Lo, I, that made the night, Have given his conscience eyes Therein to find the Right. I have stretched out his hand, Oh, not to grasp but feel, Have taught his aims to land, But tipped the aims with steel; "Have given him iron resolve And one great master-key, Courage, to bid revolve The hinge of destiny, And beams from heaven to build The road to Otherwise, With broken gloom to gild The causeway of his sighs "Whereby I watch him come At last to judge of Me, Beyond the thunder's drum, The cymbals of the sea. Aye, Shaitan, plumb the Space And Time that planets buoy, And you shall know the place Appointed for my toy. "I could not give him rest, And see him satiate At once, or make the zest Of life an opiate. I might have been his lord, I had not been his friend To sheathe his spirit's sword And start him at the end. "I would not make him old, That he might see his port Fling its nocturne of gold And cheerfulness athwart The dusk. I planned the wave, And wealth of wind and star. Could one be gay and brave Who never saw afar "The cause that he outlives Only because he fought, The peaks to which he strives, The ranges of his thought, Until the dawn to be Relieve his watchfires dim, Not by his faith in Me But by my faith in him! "I also have my dreams, And through my darkest cloud His climbing phalanx gleams To my salute, and, proud Of him even in defeat, My light upon his brow, My roughness at his feet, I triumph. Shaitan, bow!" But Shaitan like an ass Jibbed and would not give ear. Just so it came to pass, Declares our Book, Ghaffir. We know that in the heat Of disputation--well, Allah shot out his feet, And Shaitan went to hell. Thus Abdelal. The gate Shook to the pilgrims' cry: "When will you cease to prate, Beards of calamity!" The poet: "Allah's bliss Fall on his watchmen! Thus Our journey's password is That God has faith in us." II THE JOY OF THE WORDS The Sufis trembled: "Open, open wide, Dismiss us to illuminate the East." Old Ghaffir fumbled the reluctant bolts, Lifting his hands and eyes as for a feast. And this was their viaticum. His words Were mingled with their eagerness like yeast: Go forth, poor words! If truly you are free, Simple, direct, you shall be winged like birds, Voiced like the sea. Walk humbly clad! Be sure those words are lame That ride a-clatter, or that deck and pad A puny frame. As in your dress, So in your speech be plain! Be not deceived; the Mighty Meaningless Are loud in vain. Be not puffed up, Nor drunk with your own sound! Shall men drink deeply when an empty cup Is handed round? Shout not at heaven! Say what I bade you say. Simplicity is beauty dwelling even In yea or nay. Be this your goal. Beauty within man's reach Is poetry. You cannot touch man's soul Save with man's speech. Therefore go straight. You shall not turn aside To vain display; for yonder lies the gate Where gods abide Your coming. Go! The way was never hard. What would you more than common flowers or snow? For your reward, Be understood, And thus shall you be sung. Aye, you who think to show us any good, Speak in our tongue. III THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT The watchman finished, as the southern gate Clanged, and the breathless city lay behind. The Dreamer's shadows shrank against the wall, As though the desert called and none replied, Till the young pilot, standing out to night, Swung clear these lines to sound the depths of her: "Blue Persian night, Soft, voiceless as the summer sea! Flooding the bouldered desert sand, submerge This cypressed isle And Demavend's snow-spire--a sunken rock On your hushed floor, where I the diver stand Beyond the reach of day. And though, up through your overwhelming peace, I see your surface, heaven, I would not rise there, being drowned in you, Blue Persian night. "Blue Persian night, O consolation of the East! In your clear breathless oceanic sheen My heart's an isle, From whose innumerable caves and coigns-- When dusk awakes the city of my mind-- Exploring boats set forth, Bound for the harbour-lights of God knows where, Full, full of God knows what; It must be love of Him, or Her, or You, Blue Persian night." Her signal answered; for a slender wand Of moonbeam touched the Dreamer on the mouth. The caravan looked upward with a shout And set its camels rolling to the south, Murmuring: "Blue Persian night, none ever saw You through your own sheer purity before us. Rise up our songs as bubbles from the sand ..." Somewhere among the camels rose this chorus: Dong! Dong! Lurching along Out of the dusk Into the night. Noiseless and lusty, Dreamy and dusty, Looms the long caravan-line into sight. Dong! Dong! Never a song, Never a footfall A breath or a sigh. Ghostly and stolid, Stately and squalid, Creeps the monotonous caravan by. Dong! Dong! Fugitive throng. Out of the dark Into the night, Silent and lonely, Gone!... the bells only Tells us a caravan once was in sight. IV THE INWARDNESS OF THE MERCHANT Moussa, the son of the Crypto-Jew, Had eaten his fill of yellow stew And a bit besides (as a business man He was far too quick for the caravan, Who loved him not, though it feared his guile). Moussa then: "I shall walk awhile "To ease my soul of its heavy load." His pious friends: "May you find a road," And winked. "His soul has begun to feel There's nothing left but a march to steal." But one from the village, decoying quail For the governor's pot, came back with a tale Of a lean arm shaken against the sky Like a stunted thorn, and this piteous cry: "As sound within an ice-bound desert mewed Drags out existence at the very core Of isolation, as breakers slip ashore In vainly eternal whispers to the nude Reef-coral, where no human feet intrude Upon the purity of stillness; or As, far from life, unmated eagles soar Above the hilltops' breathless solitude, "So moves my love, like these a thing apart, Fierce, in the ruined temple of my heart, Shy as a shooting star that peers new-risen Mid strangers. Even so. Pent in the prison Of space my soul, a lonely planet, wheels ... Men call the sum of loneliness 'Ideals.'" This is the plaint that the cross-road heard Where it strikes from Kashan to Burujird. The townsmen, met by the sun-dried stream, Caught a voice high up like an angel's scream Or a teaspoon tapping the bowl of heaven, And they cried: "_Ajab!_ May we be forgiven, "But it sounds a soul of the rarer sort Whose wings are set for no earthly port." And the answer came, as they cried: "Who's that?" "One that sells short weight in mutton fat." V THE LESSON OF THE CAMEL Light was not. All was still. The caravan Had ceased its song and motion by the bed Wherein the hill-stream tosses sleeplessly, The only sound, save one staccato note Interminably piped by tiny owls. The camp lay balmed in slumber, as the dead Are straitened in white trappings. Then a voice, Deeper than any dead black mountain pool Or blacker well where devils cool by day, Seemed to commune with Dreamer-of-the-Age, Who, peering through the cloak about his head, Challenged: "Who speaks?" The voice replied: "A friend Unknown to you." ... It was old Peacock Tous, The great grey camel with the crimson tail On whom the queen was wont to ride. He said: "Sheikh, I was born among the Bakhtiari, The shelter of their hawthorn vales was mine; For me, unbroken to the loads men carry, The breeze that crowns their uplands glowed as wine To drink. I, Tous, the Peacock, whom men call so Because I ever moved as one above The common herd, was mad and merry. Also I knew not yet the prickled herb of Love. "Spring tricked the desert out with flowered patterns For me to tread like flowered carpets wrought In patience by my master's painted slatterns-- He said that only Persian _women_ fought. Ah, youth is free and silken-haired and leggy! No camel knows why Allah makes it end, But He is wiser. Me the tribe's Il-Beggi Spied out and sent as tribute to a friend, "A dweller in black tents, a nomad chieftain Of Khamseh Arabs or unruled Kashgai, Whose cattle-raids and rapines past belief stain The furthest page of camel-history. And shamefully the ragged sutlers thwacked us, Until I learned, as to this manner born, That pride must find a mother in the cactus And hope the milk of kindness in the thorn. "O Sheikh, I found. A milk-white _nakeh_ followed The drove of males, and I would lag behind With her, no matter how the drivers holloa'ed-- Man never doubts that all but he are blind. At nightfall, when our champing echoed surly Beyond the cheerful circle of the fire, Something within me whispered, and thus early I bore the burden of the world's desire. "But I was saddled with the will of Allah, Since one there was more fleet of foot than I, The chosen of the chief of the Mehallah, Whose nostrils quivered as he passed me by. To her, beside his paces and his frothing, My steadfastness was common as the air, My passion and my patience were as nothing, Because fate chose to make my rival fair. "I suffered and was silent--some said lazy-- Until the seasons drove us to the plain. The nomads sold me then to a Shirazi. I never met my happiness again, But trod the same old measure back and forward, And passed a friend as seldom as a tree. Oh, heaviness of ever going shoreward, Of bringing all fruition to the sea! "For I have fared from sea to sea like you, sirs, And with your like, not once but many times. Your path acclaims me eldest of its users, It tells my step as I foresee your rhymes. I know by heart a heartache's thousandth chapter As you have read the preface of delight. The silence you shall enter, I have mapped her. O singing caravan, I was To-night "Long ere you dreamed. I dreaming of my lady Became the cargo-bearer we call Self. Two hundredweight of flesh that spouted Sa'di, A restless bag of bones intent on pelf, Have straddled me in turn.... Hashish and spices, Wheat, poisons, satins, brass, and graven stone, I, Tous, have borne all human needs and vices As solemnly as had they been my own. "Moon-faced sultanas blue with kohl a-pillion, Grey ambergris, pink damask-roses' oil, Deep murex purple, beards or lips vermilion As Abu Musa's flaming scarlet soil I have borne--and dung and lacquer. I have flooded Bazaars with poppy-seed and filigree. Men little guess the stuff that I have studied, Or what their vaunted traffic seems to me. "I am hardened to all wonderments and stories-- My ears have borne the hardest of my task-- I have carried pearls from Lingah up to Tauris, And Russian Jews from Lenkoran to Jask. I have watched fat vessels crammed by sweating coolies With all the rubbish that the rich devise, And often I have wondered who the fool is That takes it all, and whom the fool supplies. "Yet ran my thoughts on her, though cedar rafters Were laid on me, or mottled silk and plush, Although the tinkling scales of varied laughters Rode me from Bandar Abbas to Barfrush, Or broken hearts from Astara to Gwetter. All ironies have made their moving house Of me. I smile to think how many a letter Has passed from loved to lover thanks to Tous "The loveless. Think you men alone are lonely, My masters? I have also worshipped one, Have built my days of faith and service only, And while I worshipped all my life was gone. I spent the funds of life in growing older, In heaping fuel on a smothered fire. See how my tale is rounded! On my shoulder I bear the burden of _your_ world's desire. "Yet keep that inner smile; and never show it Though the Account be nothing--shorn of her. Be wise, O Sheikh. Pray God to be a poet Lest life should make you a philosopher, Or lest the dreams of which you had the making Should prove to be such stuff as still I trail, And bring your heart, my withers, nigh to breaking When at the last the Bearer eyes the Bale, "As you shall penetrate this day or morrow The miracle of willing servitude, And yet believe therein. It is the sorrow And not the love that asks to be subdued; It is the mirage not the truth that trammels The travelling feet. Ah, if men only knew How their brief frenzies move the mirth of camels, Our rests were longer and our journeys few. "Old Tous is up. The camp is struck and ready For fresh emprise. Dawn sifts the clay-blue sky For gold. Now see how dominant and steady I prose along that have no mind to fly. This is my lesson: over sand or shingle, Blow hot, blow cold, by mountain, plain and khor, Coming and going, I must set a-jingle My own deep bell.... And you must ask for more!" He ceased. White on the mirror of the air His breath made patterns. In a ruined farm Red cocks blared out and shouted down the owls. The drivers rubbed their eyes. Another day Among the days was starting on its march.... Above the pilgrims fallen to their prayers Old Tous stood upright, blinking at the sun. VI THE BOASTING OF YOUTH The soldier-lad from Kerman, The sailor-lad from Jask Knew naught that should deter man From finishing the cask. "Wine sets the Faithful jibbing Like mules before an inn, But we sit bravely bibbing, And hold our own with sin." Said the stout-hearted wonder Of Jask: "Wine frights not me. I fear no foe but thunder And winds that sting the sea." "And I," said he of Kerman, "Fear nothing but the night, Or some imperious _firman_ That bids the Faithful fight." "They say some lads fear ladies And truckle to them." "Who Could be so weak? The _Cadis_ Rise up for me and you." "But doctors, nay and princes, Have troubles of their own, Save those whom fire convinces.... I leave the stuff alone." "And I...." Then both bethought them That, howso strong and wise, Their principles had caught them On this mad enterprise. "'Tis time to act with daring, And rest," said he of Jask, And swore a mighty swearing, (And drained another flask). "If I go on, attendant Upon this woman's way, May I become dependant On your arrears of pay!" "If I," said Captain Kerman, "Should knuckle to my mate, May I become a merman And live on maggot-bait!" "Then since we have discovered That women need our strength"-- (The tavern-houris hovered) "To hold them at arm's length, Sit down in this rest-house, and Tell me a tale among The tales, one in your thousand!" This was the story sung: "I threw my love about you like fine raiment; I let you kill my pride. You passed me by, but smiled at me in payment, And I was satisfied. "I made my mind a plaything for your leisure, Content to be ignored. Body and soul I waited on your pleasure, Waited--without reward. "I have no faint repinings that we met, dear, Or that I left you cold. I rub my hands. You will be colder yet, dear, Some day when you are old." "Forbidden wine is mellow. The sun has set. Of whom Sing you this song, Brave Fellow? Night is the ante-room Breeze-sprinkled to keep cooler The feasting-halls behind." "She might have been my ruler But for my _Strength of Mind_." "That was the tune to whistle! How have I longed to learn The deeds of men of gristle Like mine!..." "Tell me in turn Some of your lore of women, Whose wiles are deep as _bhang_. Your strength shall teach to swim men Who fall in love...." He sang: "You came to me, and well you chose your quarry. You told your tale, and well you played your role. You spoke of suffering, and I was sorry With all my heart, with all my soul. 'Out of the deep,' you said. I thought to save you, And stunned myself upon the covered shoal. Yet, poor deceptive shallows, I forgave you With all my heart, with all my soul. You sought whatever evil had not sought you. In vain I strove to make your nature whole. I did not know the market that had bought you With all your heart, with all your soul. If man had one pure impulse you would smudge it. You had one gift, my pity, which you stole. Now I will only tell you that I grudge it With all my heart, with all my soul." "Of whom this song, Brave Fellow? The stars in heaven's black soil Fold up their petalled yellow That pays the angels' toil." The lamp had burned its wick dim, The pair had drunk their fill.... "I might have been her victim But for my _Strength of Will_." Then one said to the other: "Such strength as yours and mine Must put its foot down, brother, And stay here--pass the wine-- Till, for the world's salvation, Shall radiate from this den The Great Confederation Of Independent Men." * * * * * The last sour mule was saddled, On went the caravan. These twain turned on the raddled Handmaidens of the _han_, Blinked, cast them forth with loathing Because the queen was fair, And lest their lack of clothing Should lay man's weakness bare. White as a cloud in summer, Slender as sun-shot rain-- Earth knows what moods become her-- The queen passed.... In her train The Great Confederation Trod with such wealth of _Will_ That, in its trepidation, It never paid its bill. VII THE HEART OF THE SLAVE But as they fared slave Obeidullah failed. Devouring fever shook him like a rat, And ere they reached Kashan his course was run. Then freedom came towards him, and he spoke: "Here is an eye of water, mulberry-trees, A rest-house, and to me a stranger thing, Rest. Caravan be strong, fare on with blessings Whence you must forge your happiness--but I, Possessed of peace, shall never see the end. The heart within me has been fire so long That now my body is smoke. I watch it drift Life leaves me gently as a mistress goes Before her time to meet the uncoloured days, Saying: 'I have lived. Plead not. 'Twill be in vain. You were the end of summer. I have passed Out of the garden with fresh scents and dews Upon me, out ere sunset with cool hands, The supple tread of youth and glorying limbs Firm as resolve, unblemished as my pride; Passed ere a leaf be fallen, or losing fights Begin, that smirch the memory of love....' Sweet is the shade, and death's cool lips are welcome After the burning kisses of the sun, The strained embraces of my owner, Toil. I shall remember her with gratitude But no regret, as I lie here. The dawn Biting the desert-edge shall not disturb me, Nor green oases zigzagged through the heat Like stepping-stones. The many-coloured hills, Heaven's mutable emotions, these are past. Beyond them I shall find security Of tenure in the outstretched hands of God." Thereat his fellows made lament, and urged: "Sleep on and take your rest, but not for ever. Time adds to strength, and you shall rise with us Who wait. Already we foresee the coast. A little while...." Slave Obeidullah raised Himself and looked ahead with shining eyes: "The moon is faint. A dust-cloud swirls. Therein I see dim marching hosts: Strange embassies and dancing girls, Spice-caravans and pilgrims. Ghosts Rise thick from this else fruitless plain, A waste that every season chars. Yet teeming centuries lie slain And trodden in the road to Fars. "The still, white, creeping road slips on, Marked by the bones of man and beast. What comeliness and might have gone To pad the highway of the East! Long dynasties of fallen rose, The glories of a thousand wars, A million lovers' hearts compose The dust upon the road to Fars. "No tears have ever served to hold This shifting velvet, fathom-deep, Though vain and ceaseless winds have rolled Its pile wherein the ages sleep. Between your fingers you may sift Kings, poets, priests and _charvadars_. Heaven knows how many make a drift Of dust upon the road to Fars. "The wraiths subside. And, One with All, Soon, in the brevity of length, Our lives shall hear the voiceless call That builds this earth of love and strength. Eternal, breathless, we shall wait, Till, last of all the Avatars, God finds us in his first estate: The dust upon the road to Fars." So still he lay, so still the pilgrims deemed He was no longer there. The deepening shade Covered him softly. With his latest breath Slave Obeidullah looked upon the Queen: "You whom I loved so steadfastly, If all the blest should ask to see The cause for which my spirit came Among them with so little claim To peace, this book should speak for me. "I strove and only asked in fee Hope of your immortality Not mine--I had no other aim You whom I loved. "The Judge will bend to hear my plea, And take my songs upon his knee. Perhaps His hand will make the lame Worthy to worship you, the same As here they vainly tried to be, You whom I loved." Then, turned towards her, Obeidullah slept. VIII THE TALE OF THE CHEAPJACK Among the fruit-trees still he slumbers. All Mourned for their brother with one heavy heart. Even Tous drooped, swaying weakly in his stride; Until Farid Bahadur, cheapjack, spoke, One bootlessly afoot whose years had brought For profit this, to see existence clear And empty as a solid ball of glass. Erstwhile, he said, my peddling carried me Clean through two empires like a paper hoop, Setting me down upon the olive slopes Where Smyrna nestles back to mother earth, And so lures in the ocean. I filled my pack With kerchiefs, beads, dross, chaffering with a Greek, Although he vowed a much-loved partner's death Left him no heart for it. He blew his nose, Asking strange prices as a man distraught. I had no heart to bargain while he crooned: "Our loves were woven of one splendid thread, But not our lives, though we had been, we twain, Linked as in worship at the Spartan fane Of him who brought his brother from the dead. Ah, would our God were like his gods that said: Such love as this shall not have flowered in vain, And let the younger Castor live again The space that Pollux lay with Death instead. Dear, I had lain so gladly in the grave Not for a part of time but for God's whole Eternity, had died, yea oft, to save Not half your life, but one short hour. Your soul Was all too pure; mine had no right to ask From heaven such mercy as a saviour's task. "They say the Olympian grace was not content With housing Death, but giving Love the key. It set the troths that guided you and me Among the jewels of the firmament; And there they dwell for ever and assent To each propitious ploughing of the sea. The coasting-pilots of Infinity Well know The Brothers. So your sails were bent, Young fathomer of the blue. I linger here With following gaze that tugs my heart-strings taut All day; but every night an Argonaut Slips through the streets and darkness, seaward, far Beyond the limitations of his sphere Into the vacant place beside a star." So crooned he desolate in his dim shop, Till I became all ears and had no eyes. The fellow cheated me of three _dinars_. IX THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DOOR Slow into Kum the Glaring trailed The caravan. Its courage failed A moment. Only dust-clouds veiled The sun, that overhead From fields The Plough had turned to grain, Star-honey laden on The Wain And spices from the wind-domain, Was baking angel-bread. (Astronomers in Baghdad say That Allah gave the Milky Way To feed his guests, the dead.) Even as the dead the pilgrims lay Until the sun received his pay-- Man counts in gold, but he in grey-- Then, whining as one daft, A voice crept to each sleeper's ear, And one by one sat up to hear It soughing like a Seistan mere Where nothing ever laughed. A blur at elbow on the floor Cried: "Sleep! 'Tis but the tavern door Amoaning in the draught." "Ay," said the master of the inn, "A black-faced gaper that lets in The dark, my creditors, and kin! Last month it strained my wrist, did The lout, so hard it slams. This week Claims it for fuel. See the leak Of air it springs! Its hinges creak, Its wood is warped and twisted. 'Tis heavy-hearted as a man, Stark, crazy thing!... It feels uncann...." The wheezing voice persisted. "Earth bare me in Mazanderan, Where, breaking her dead level plan, Steep foliage opens like a fan To hide her virgin blush; And singing, caravan, like you Brooks dance towards the Caspian blue Past coolth wherein mauve turtles coo To panthers in the rush, That turn hill-pools to amethyst. Here bucks drink deep and tigers tryst Neck-deep in grasses lush. "And there the stainless peaks are kissed By heaven whose crowning mercy, mist, With cloud-lands white as Allah's fist Anoints their heads with rain. We never dreamed, where nature pours, That life could run as thin as yours-- A waif thirst-stricken to all fours-- Or verdure, but a vein In sandscapes wincing from the sun That burns your flesh and visions dun, Crawl throbbing through the plain. "I grew. My shadow weighed a ton; I held a countless garrison; My boughs were roads for apes to run Around the white owl's niche. The hum of bees, the blue jay's scream.... The forest came to love and teem In me beside the vivid stream Shot through with speckled fish; Till, weary of my sheltered glen, I craved a human denizen Fate granted me my wish. "Yea, I had longed (if slope and fen Can love like this, the love of men Must live above our nature's ken) To see and shade the room, To shield far-leaning the abode, Wherein the souls of lovers glowed To songs that dimmed the bulbul's ode ... And man became my doom. He dragged me through the dew-drenched brake, And took the heart of me to make A tavern-door at Kum." The pilgrims sat erect, engrossed, Or searched the crannies for a ghost. "Ah, heed it not," implored the host; "This hell-burnt father's son Moans ever like a soul oppressed, And takes the fancy of a guest, And makes my house no house of rest: I would its voice were gone. Yet be indulgent, sirs! 'Tis old. Next week it shall be burnt or sold. A new--" The voice went on: "Here have I stood while life unrolled But not the tale my breezes told. Moonlight alone conceals the cold Drab city's lack of heart. Here have I watched an hundred years Bespatter me with blood and tears, Yet leave man ever in arrears Of where my monkeys start. No more, dog-rose and meadow-sweet! The harlot's musk and rotten meat Blow at me from the mart. "No more, clear streams and fairy feet! But through my mouth the striving street Drains in brown spate the men who eat And drink and curse and die; And out of me the whole night long Reel revellers--O God, their song!... Are there no mortals clean and strong, Or do they pass me by? I little thought that I should leave For this the groves where turtles grieve Far closer to the sky. "Instead of every song-bird's note I know the scales a merchant's throat Can compass. I have learned by rote The tricks of Copt and Jew; Can tell if Lur or Afghan brawls, The Armenian way of selling shawls Softly, and how an Arab bawls To rouse the raider's crew, Lest ululating strings of slaves Should take the kennel for their graves.... Raids! I have seen a few, "Or wars, occasion dubs them--waves Of Mongol sultans, Kurdish braves. They--Find me words! the Simun _raves_-- They worked ... 'tis called their will, Battered me in--behold the dint-- With all their hearts that felt like flint, Besmeared the city with the tint Of sunset on my hill. My leopards stalk my bucks at eve-- I shivered as I heard them heave-- At least they ate their kill. "I followed that.... But men who weave Such flowing robes of make-believe, I think the flood was wept by Eve-- Some sportsman shot the dove-- These puzzled me, for God is good And man His image--not of wood, Thank God!--At last I understood All ... all except their love. I grew so hard that I could trace His hand's chief glory in their race. Perhaps He wore a glove." Then one without made haste to smite The malcontent. It opened. Night Stood on the threshold dressed in white, And myriad-eyed and blind. The ostler murmured: "Some _Afrit_ Or bitter worm has entered it; Nor jamb nor lintel seems to fit. I know its frame of mind." "Air stirs the dust upon the floor," The landlord cried. "Fool! Shut that door Amoaning in the wind." "My glade was deep, a lichened well Of ether, limpid as a bell Buoyed on the manifold ground-swell Whose distance changed attires As sun-stroked plush, a roundelay Of all red-blue and purple grey, And, at each rise and fall of day, Snows dyed like altar fires Licked through those loud green sheaves of copse, Bent hyphens 'twixt the mountain-tops, Mosques of my motley choirs. "And I, who gave them bed and bower For nights enduring but an hour Mid blaring miles of trumpet-flower, Leagues of liana-wreath, I saw the rocks through leaves and lings, Could blink the fangs and feel the wings, Thrill with the elemental things Of life and love and death. The purity of air and brook And song helped me to overlook The rapine underneath. "But you--no! one dream more: an elf, Askip on ochre mountain-shelf, Who once had seen a man himself. I used his wand to gauge The sheen of moths and peacocks' whir, To plumb the jungle-aisles, to stir The drifts of frankincense and myrrh, And amorous lithe shapes that purr.... 'Tis finished. Turn the page To where man cased his bones in fat. His mate moved like a tiger-cat Until he built her cage. "You, I have watched you all who sat Successive round the food-stained mat, And reckoned many who lived for that Alone; have seen the mark Of that last state the Thinking Beast Peep through the foliage of the feast, And crown its poet's flight with greased Fingers that grope the dark; Have heard a cleanlier bosom catch Her breath, and fumble with my latch Irresolute. The lark "My inmates never feared to match Bespoke the end. I belched the batch, Rolling them down the street, a patch Of dirt against the dawn. Then in its stead there came a saint, Inventor of a soul-complaint, Who gave men's faith a coat of paint Like mine, and made me yawn With furtive wenching. Here have sighed Exultant groom and weeping bride Led like a captive fawn. "This way passed those who marry lean Girl-chattels ere their times of teen. I knew a like but milder scene: A hawk, small birds that cower. How soon the chosen was brought back dead-- Poisoned, the _hakim_ always said-- The husband groaned beside the bed, Arose, and kept the dower, But swept his conscience out with prayer. Man took the angels unaware When he became a power. "And what of woman? On my stair The merchants spread their gaudiest ware, For which fools bought a love affair That ended in a jerk. Enough! To round the _tamasha_ A bloated thing came by, the Shah; It grinned, and viziers fawned 'Ha! ha!' Curs, brainless as a Turk. And all the women in his train Beheld him once and ne'er again, And called his love their work. "You see, my friends, I tired of this Wild doubling in the chase of bliss. Pards miss their spring as men their kiss, And yet the quarry dies. I learned the world's least mortal god, Whose epitaph is Ichabod, May sport till noon, but if he nod Shall never more arise. Then, caravan, you passed, and I Have solved my riddle with a cry: The sad are never wise. "Your song was all that I had heard In dreams beyond the wildest bird, That rose above my yellow-furred Basses that bell and roar. It took the heart of me in tow To heights that I had longed to know, To the great deeps where lovers go And find--and want--no shore. In these alone is man fulfilled; And gleaming in the air I build My hope of him once more. "For all the few that see truth whole, And take its endlessness for goal, And steer by stars as if no shoal Could mar their firmament, For all the few that sing and sail Knowing their quest of small avail, Thank God who gave them strength to fail In finding what He meant...." "Poets!" the landlord groaned, "and poor! This house is cursed." He banged the door Behind them as they went. And distance placed soft hands upon their mouths. X THE SONG OF THE SELVES DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE 'Twas in old Tehran City, Hard by the old bazaar, I heard a restless ditty That pushed my door ajar; A song nor great nor witty, It spoke of my own mind. I looked on Tehran City, And knew I had been blind, Or else the streets were altered As by a peri's wand. "Who are you, friends?" I faltered. "The Pilgrims of Beyond," They said. I kissed the tatters That wiser heads contemn. I saw the Thing-that-matters, And took the road with them. I seek. Bestow no pity On Failure's courtier. Say: "'Twas well to find the city, But that was yesterday." THE PILGRIMS Athirst as the Hadramut, Our spirits correspond With God by all the gamut Of harmony, too fond Of Him for prayer that rifles His treasury for trifles. No load of blessing stifles The Pilgrims of Beyond. DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE And yet the empty-handed Hold richer merchandise Than ever fable landed From Dreamland's argosies, Since we, the symbol-merchants, Are partners with Bulbul. The silversmith of her chants Knows how our chests are full. In marts, where echoes answer And only they, we trade. But join our caravan, sir, And count your fortune made. Dawn brings us dazzling offers With fingers gemmed and pearled, And evening fills our coffers As we explain the world, Green fields and seas that curtsey To us and mock Despair; For blossoms in the dirt see Their spirit in the air. And Ecstasy our servant Demands no other wage But that we be observant To joy in pilgrimage. THE MERCHANTS We do not bid our master Declare His word His bond, Or make His payments faster-- As though He would abscond! We ask Him for too little To strain at jot or tittle. We know our lives are brittle, We Pilgrims of Beyond. DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE We come from everlasting Towards eternity, Ho! not in dirge and fasting But lapped in jollity. Though sackcloth be our clothing We bear no ash but fire. We have no sickly loathing Of youth and youth's desire. We prize no consummation Of one peculiar creed. We travel for a nation, The one that feels our need. Our tongue conceals no message, But leaves you free to find, And vaunts itself the presage Of those that come behind. THE CAMELMEN Here is no patch of shade. A Fierce wilderness and blonde Links Delhi to Hodeidah, Tashkent to Trebizond. The cargo is our brother's, We march and moil for others, Until the desert smothers The Pilgrims of Beyond. DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE Hark how our camels grumble At morn! Would you permit The stone on which you stumble To make you carry it? And if at last your burden Be cheapened in a shop, Seraglio or Lur den, Should lack of humour stop The game at its beginning? We lug the stuff of dreams. Earth does her best by spinning, She cannot help the seams; But you can help to monger The broidery. She may Have made you richer, stronger, To give her best away. I own no musk or camphor, I have no truck with care, Nor change the thing I am for The things men only wear. THE SOLDIERS First cousin of a sieve is The uniform we donned. We slop along on _ghivehs_, In rags caparisonned. No Shah has ever paid us. All brigands mock and raid us, And misery has made us The Pilgrims of Beyond. DREAMER-OF-THE-AGE What then! Would you be willing To quit the caravan, And fall again to drilling, Pent in the walled _meidan_, When history flings open Blank scrolls for you to write Such victories as no pen Has ever brought to light? You shall not burn as Jengiz, Nor rage like Timur Lang. Your foemen are _ferengis_ Of whom no epic sang. The housed that blame the tented, Or comfort those that think, The flocks that die contented With settling down to blink The sun we keep our eyes on, That bow their heads too far To face their own horizon, On these be war on war. Cursed by the bonds you sever, The bondsmen you release, Go, seek the Land of Fever And find the Land of Ease. THE CARAVAN Lift up your hearts, ye singers! We lift them up in song. Behold, the sunset lingers. No less shall night be long. We meet her unaffrighted, Though never bourne be sighted. We _meant_ to be benighted Still moving fleet and strong. We smooth the stony places For those that else despond. We pass, and leave no traces Save this, a broken frond, And this, that hands once craven Take hardship for the haven Upon whose rocks is graven: "The Pilgrims of Beyond." XI THE STORY OF THE SUTLER And so the song was finished. Then they called To Kizzil Bash, the Sutler of Dilman, "Take up the tale, for you have wandered far Behind strange masters...." Once, he said, I served One of the Roumi lordlings, silver-faced, Who to forget some sorrow or lost love-- Such is their way--came with an embassage To cringe before the Caliph in Stamboul For something sordid, trade.... He mouthed our verse To please his guests, and I corrected him. The man was cypress-sad and lone, but he Could not be silent as the great should be, Because he neither knew his place nor me. The boatman marvelled at his lack of dignity. They knew the currents. He was bent on steering, And spoke of God in terms wellnigh endearing. I see him still, sharp beard, black velvet mantle, ear-ring. He dug with slaves for Greekling manuscript, Danced like a slave-girl when he found, and shipped Westward cracked heads and friezes we had chipped. I saw him kiss a statue, murmuring eager-lipped: "Fear was born when the woods were young. Chance had gathered an heap of sods, Where the slip of a tree-man's tongue Throned the dam of the elder gods. Twilight, a rustled leaf, Started the first belief In some unearthly Chief Latent behind Cover of aspen shade. Skirting the haunted glade Some one found speech, and prayed. Was it the wind Sniffing his cavern or the demon's laughter? Here from the night he conjured up Hereafter, Quarried the river-mists to house the unseen. Only the woodpecker had found life hollow, And gods went whither none was fain to follow, Because the earth was green And Afterwards was black. "Man, the child of a tale of rape, Drew the seas with his hunting ships, Cut their prows to a giant's shape, Fitted names to their snarling lips: Gods in his image born, Singing, fierce-eyed, unshorn, Lords of a drinking-horn Five fathoms deep; Holding the one reward Carved by a dripping sword, Feasts, and above them stored Ceiling-high sleep. Save to the conqueror Life was put-off Dying, And Death brought nothing but the irk of lying-- How long--with over-restful hosts abed. The rough immortals, whom he met unshrinking, Spared him from nothing but the pain of thinking. And so the earth was red While Afterwards was grey. "Jungles thinned, and the clearings merged Where the wandering clans drew breath. Druids rose and the people surged. Then the blessing of Nazareth Fell on them mad and mild, Boasting itself a child. Smite it! And yet it smiled. There, as it kneeled, Lowliness rose to might, Deeming our days a night, Bodily joy a plight Soon to be healed; Gave to one god all credit for creation, But, lest the Path should seem the Destination, Strove to attune man's heartstrings to a rack, Until the soul was fortified to change hells, While saints and poets chanted songs of angels, Confessing earth was black But Afterwards was gold. "Faith was raised to the power of millions, Went as wine to a single head, Took its chiefs for the sun's postillions, Claimed to speak in its founder's stead; Till in the western skies Reason's epiphanies Beckoned the other-wise Men to rebirth. Doubt, that makes spirits lithe, Woke and began to writhe, Burst through the osier withe, Freed the old earth. Nature cried out again for recognition, Claiming that flesh is more than mere transition, That mouths were made for sweeter things than prayer. Yea, she, that first revealed the superhuman, Out of the depths in us shall bring the new man Who knows that earth is fair, And Afterwards--who knows!" 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 Karun, 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 aeons To these rooster-flights and paeans. 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-Kerbelai, 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-Kerbelai, 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-Kerbelai 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 _anderun_-- 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-Kerbelai 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 _narghile_ 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 winged 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 _Maghrebin_ 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-Kerbelai 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 _anderun_ 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, Shirin 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, Majnun, 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-Katun! 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 formulae. 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 cursed 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 Shabdiz, the pride of King Khusraw Parviz. 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 formulae. 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 formulae. 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 formulae. 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 Rhodope'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 Harun-el-Rashid'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. Even monks planned theft of saintly scalps; stray hairs and chips of nail and chine, Divinely shielded through the Alps, would make the fortune of the Rhine. I often tried to hide myself from this besetting spook of pelf. In olive-groves I called in vain to simple faun and acorn-elf. I pictured kine that kissed their own reflections on the impulsive Rhone, A little maid with sunflower hair, a nest we found ... the birds had flown. I think Alexius was wise to keep us out. Our hungry eyes Fixed on his capital. Why go farther when here were rich supplies? The Pope that cursed our tastes had laid the hand of blessing on this raid. Blest chance indeed--as though a man should drink his fill and then be paid! Each set to whet his falchion-pet that only friends had tasted yet. We dressed our hopes in purple silk, wallowed in dreamland's wine and milk. Yet more than any Sultan's spoil fair women should repay our toil. Already some were filled with thoughts that our red cross was meant to foil. The notion twinged us. We compared our prospects with the way we fared On these lean suburbs and the flats about Barbyses. We were snared! The very Greeks, whose prayers had lured us into this adventure, lodged Their saviours in a baited trap. Lord, how these foxes turned and dodged. There lay our army like a log; our camp, our tenets, turned to bog. We sank. Disorder brought disease that stalked us spectral through the fog. The Greeks we came to bolster up against their weakness filled our cup With turpitude; the Byzantine put Circe's poison in our wine. Our aspirations all became mean as our hosts; the inner flame Went out. From many a starting-point we found a common ground in shame; For here no soul can keep its health, but cat-like honour creeps by stealth Down side streets where the children breathe an atmosphere of rotting wealth. Between our fellow-churches rose the hate that heaven had meant for foes.... The infidel might well have laughed. Perhaps he did. We came to blows. And I was sad that Christians had nothing in common, saving bad Blood, that our highest dizziest heads could all divide but none could add. But when spring lit the Judas-trees our chieftains kissed the Emperor's knees. We crossed to Asia sick at heart. Alexius kept us well apart, Shuffling us o'er the Bosphorus. The number and the rank of us Exceeded those who went to Troy for Helen the Adulterous. On the Bithynian plain our force drew up: an hundred thousand horse With foot and monks and womankind in crowds that none can call to mind. Fear stuffed the empty space ahead with devils and the shapes of dread That decked our church. A ghastly rush of loneliness made every head Feel like a pinpoint. Discontent ran through the score of nations blent In cries. Their ribald spokesman forced a drunkard's way to Godfrey's tent: _You that have led us through the many tests Of Hungary, King Caloman, and Thrace, Who think of kingdoms as of palimpsests And human nature as a carapace, Go up and prosper in your lofty chase! We cannot live on barren mountain-crests. Our wildest dreams are prisoners that pace The little space between a woman's breasts._ _Here lies the stronghold that our zeal invests, This infidel alone we long to face. This hollow, where our constant fancy nests, Is more to us than pedestal and dais. Nay, we will go no farther in the race For gain, respond no more to mean behests. We know our cause, and reverently embrace The little space between a woman's breasts._ _It is our holy land, and we, the guests Of passion, brand all other hosts as base. The bees have led us to their treasure-chests, A foxglove-sceptre and an hyacinth-mace, The meadow's fleeting broidery and lace. Their heaven like ours is nigh to vulgar jests. A blossom's goal and glory is to grace The little space between a woman's breasts._ _Prince, be content and choose your resting-place, Ere we be all forgotten with our quests, And this thin earth go crumbling into space, The little space between a woman's breasts._ Thereat was scandal, and a priest exclaimed that man was half a beast. I could have told him that before. Man was the half I like the least. To obviate a sinful fate the monks laid on us many weeks Of penance, wasting us the more with these inventions of the Greeks. Some paid in cash, some chose the lash--their backs were pitiful to see-- While Bishop Adhemar of Puy recited magic formulae That lurched us forward to our doom. We cleft the sultanate of Roum, Calling for bread. The peasants fled. We swept the country like a broom. Our armed migration choked the road. It ran ahead, a stream that flowed Uphill to glory, so it seemed; and so imagination strode-- O Jack o' lantern!--into the unknown. The Virgin on a silver throne, Our leaders swore, went on before us. I saw nothing but the Rhone, The impulsive Rhone that tumbles down, and breaks clean through the grey-walled town. I heard it rustle in its bed where others heard the Virgin's gown. I blamed the foeman for my thirst, for sandstorm, flies, heat, scurvy--cursed Them. Piles of grievance fumed until the red fire kindled. Madness burst All bounds, and capered in the glare that wrapped us round like Nessus' shirt. Each day 'twas there with yards to spare, and would not tear. How blue can hurt! In my delirium I smelt a mirage, heard the swallows skim Above the reeds where angels knelt with envious eyes to watch me swim. The preacher said Jehovah's cloud and pillar would go with us. Yea, The sky was on our heads alway. The sun rose up and cried aloud, And stood immobilized at noon. We wondered if at Ajalon The Jews thanked Joshua for the boon of this divine phenomenon. We came to Nice and formed a siege with tortoise, belfry, catapult, And curse that brought even less result. Each lordling quarrelled with his liege, Layman with priest, until the place surrendered, and again we lurched Forward. I heard our name was made. I only saw how it was smirched. My master clasped a small, soiled glove, and promised deeds for love's sweet sake That took my breath, as though his death would please The Burr. I lay awake All night afraid to cry for fright. I tried my best to be full-grown, A child now loth to be alone. My misery was all my own. I well recall our knights' first charge. It was as though a loaded barge Should seek to crush a dancing skiff. The foe was small, the plain was large. Our men returned with horses spent. It seemed the Turkish cowards meant To harry, not oppose. Sometimes we caught them full, and down they went. Strange that within so short a space I felt the strong effects of grace! The preaching man upon his ass called it a miracle. It was. I, polishing my master's helmet, also longed to overwhelm The miscreants, to hew in bits the devil and his earthly realm. A boy's high spirits, weariness, a heart impulsive as the Rhone, The wish to get this business done, the thought of little Sunflower-tress-- A flower beside The Burr, and "Why, if knights sing rubbish, should not I?"-- The preaching man's persistence, these stirred me to action by degrees. We had our fill at Dorylaeum. Our rogues were Paladins. We won, And weighed our booty by the ton. That night we chanted a Te Deum, A myriad voices in the dark; they rose like one colossal lark Ere dawn. My soul flew up with them to see the new Jerusalem And spite my tutor. I was mad to be a fighting-man, would pad My arms like muscles. So my lord took me to foray. I was glad. I had one thought: my hands were wet. That angered me: my mouth was dry. I had one fear: I might forget my master's silly battle-cry. Belike 'twas well no foe would stand--our cavaliers were out of hand-- So I was baulked. With scarce a blow we filed across the wasted land For leagues, till Baldwin turned aside, and out of Peradventure carved His slice, Edessa. We were plied to march on Antioch half-starved. For seven months sheer courage toiled to take the town. Its ramparts foiled Our engines. Sulkiness sat down within us, and temptation coiled Tight round our bodies; every vice was lurking like a cockatrice. Ah, flesh can never quite repel the sinuous things which thoughts entice. You honey-coloured Syrian girls, whose voices turned our knights to thirls, I looked away and stopped my ears by thinking of the glossier merles At home. The arm upheld by Hur had not sufficed him to deter The dissipation of our force, alas. My lord deceived The Burr. 'Twas worse when treachery let us in. Blood, lechery, pillage, fire and din Burned an impression on my mind: the sexual ugliness of sin. Cool Bohemond called Antioch his. Ere we had killed our mutineers, We the besiegers were besieged by Kurbugha and his Amirs. Alternate famine and carouse brought plague; but doubtless God allows Expensive trials of faith that we might learn the magic formulae. We melted, melted; kites were fed upon us, dogs ran dripping red From piles of nameless carrion, the race that Europe might have bred. Throughout our ranks desertion raged by daily sermons unassuaged. The preaching man was first in this "rope-dancing." Disillusion aged My youth by years. My master stayed. If he had erred he promptly paid. The pestilence ran after him. Despite the fervour I displayed He died of sores, this prince of tilt, though guarded by ten hallowed charms, This subject of all _trouvere_-lilt, lord in an hundred ladies' arms. Oh, how I struggled to be brave when the Pope's legate, grey and grim, Said simply this beside the grave: "Christ died for you. You died for Him." Only his jester seemed to care, and ceased awhile to swear and daff. "Who," he repeated in despair, "will pay me for his epitaph?" _Poor friend, this alien hungry land Has closed her lips upon her prey. The tree is spoiled into her hand; She sucks the brook's thin veins away._ _A sterner voice than bade you come To reap the tears that exiles sow Has called you to her longer home, That neither bids nor lets you go._ _Seven times you baulked her lawless laws, And foiled the customs of the year; But Death defends the tyrant's cause, And makes the silent court his lair._ _The lease of life, that none can own, Is written on her agent's roll; And from the desert and the sown He takes a harsh and equal toll,_ _High-handed, scorning code or text. No hope the debtor's gaol unlocks. A friend appeals? He is the next To occupy the narrow box._ _The witness cowers, pale with fear, When Death the stalker passes by; And only prays he may not hear That ugly sound--a victim's cry._ _One weeps; his eyes are wet as long As on Death's hand the blood is wet. He says: "The King can do no wrong!" And craves permission to forget._ _How briefly to an echo clings The memory of these solemn days, The thought of those tremendous things That Death implies but never says._ _An hour ago we laid you down. The tender, tardy autumn rain Is dried within the dusty town, And we are at our rounds again._ With every round our spirits sank in bodies lean and members lank. I saw the soul of man, a cave, a wick that smouldered and smelled rank. Men's fluid facts may wash the grime from pictures of a distant time, But I can paint the truth in one small touch: our poets ceased to rhyme. Such was the army's hopelessness. I understood, who once had seen Our fading gardener rouse himself to kick and curse the wolf-cub, Life. I would not let my feet desert, but oh the woods--the woods of home That bent and beckoned in the damp zephyr in vain! I could not stoop To play false in an enterprise however mad, if once begun. Besides another miracle was wrought in me. I was in love. I was enamoured of dear Christ; His utter beauty struck me dumb, His face alone could compensate for scenes that almost made me long For blindness. Yea, to Him I turned from all this heartache, nightly kissed His hand with passion. I at least would not betray the children's Friend. Haply His strength has always lain in contrast. I found strength to press Toward the mark. Not so the host: we could not kick it to its feet. Then heaven inspired us to devise a pious fraud--The Holy Lance. We hid it in Saint Peter's crypt, and dug it up. The people wept With rapture at this talisman, and sang the Psalm "Let God arise." Also our chiefs--they knew my zeal--bade me complete the heartening sign. White-plumed, white-horsed, with golden shield and halo, I contrived to appear On the horizon, waved my sword while Adhemar proclaimed Saint George. Our men responded with a shout. Through the five gates they tumbled out, An headlong torrent. In a trice the infidel was put to rout, And I joined in to hack and prod. Pure Tancred praised me with a nod. Ascetic Godfrey even spoke to me: "Lad, you belong to God." I won my spurs. They _made_ me proud. Before my sword the wizards bowed, Though me they washed. In vigil and fast I joined the perfect order, vowed To hold my manhood chaste, to gird on might with right and courtesy, To speak the truth, and so to be at variance with the common herd. Such loftiness a man can feel once in a flash: strong arms, clean hands That forged us into iron bands to unify the world with steel. But as I left the altar daft with the ambition I had quaffed-- A word can kill a century--one of my perfect brothers laughed: _I took the vow of virtue As others take to vice. I could not break my heart of you. Men call that sacrifice._ _The priests applauded nature. Poor devil, she was loth Enough. The love of God and you Has made me hate you both._ And I was sad that Christians, clad in robes so dazzling, were not glad To keep them spotless from the world, and give the Virgin all they had. Yet I was racked by continence of all we rightly rank as sense. I hungered for the Sunflower-tress that now my lips would never press. I wrenched and wrestled to believe that God had sent us here to grieve Our bodies with this fruitlessness, that only fakirs could achieve His purpose. Then in blind revolt my soul like an unbroken colt Ran round and round an empty field. The hedge was thick. I could not bolt, Though one poor knight on stiffened knee revealed beneath his breath to me His thoughts on women while the monks recited magic formulae. I sought for solace in renown. Men watched me swagger through the town The youngest knight in Christendom. When women passed I tried to frown. A year I suffered in this way before the wreck of our array Would undertake the final march. My soul was saved by movement. May Was with us, when my tutor closed his wintry Juvenal and posed Mid nightingales to quote and kiss the _Pervigilium Veneris_. I drove his authors from my head, and read Augustin hard instead; But sap was mounting in my veins and western groves where finches wed. To these no sound of sapphire seas, no stunted firs of Lebanon, Not Tyrian dyes nor Tripoli's loud yellows deafened. We ran on Through landmarks famed in Holy Writ, Emmaus, Bethlehem ... at last We saw the walls of Zion lit blood-red by sunset and the past. The conquest of another world unfurled beneath our feet, the land Of miracle and mystery lay as a bauble in our hand. Men flung their caps up, feigned a swoon. With prostrate lines of us the moon Drew silver circles round the site. A cock crowed--many hours too soon. We thought to prise the gates ajar. My tutor wrote their private Lar Or else--with Tacitus--their folk designed them for eternal war. The moat was wide; we feebly tried to stop its gape with pebbles, cried "Fall, Jericho!" The blessed wall stood firm; but Christ was on our side. The Church had saved Him from His wan repute and thrust Him in our van, Bronzed, scarred. Alas, the first crusade had made Him out a fighting man! He taught the Turks to mock Giaours!... sent timely Genoese to build Wheeled wooden turrets. These we filled brimful. Jerusalem was ours. We entered reverent, barefoot; slew three livelong nights and mornings through, Then paused to sing a thanksgiving. We massacred the morrow too. And I was glad a Christian lad could boast of some small suffering _ad Majorem Dei gloriam_. I only longed to burn Baghdad. Nay, I can say I never hid to chamber as my fellows did. I felt my conscience clear as frost, and touched no woman--God forbid. I set my contrite soul apart with mass, procession, penance, rites That took me out to see the sights, brushing ecstatic lanes athwart The quiddering mob with tears of joy--my tutor's phrase was hoi polloi-- Though few were left. Some Greeks of ours confused Jerusalem with Troy. But most the bestial German louts made even their hardest allies sick; They ran to mutilate the quick and sniff the dead with joyous snouts. Shriven, forgiven, we embraced each stone that Christ had touched, and placed Such relics under treble guard. One note in our rejoicings jarred. It seemed some types of Jewish dog escaped the flaming synagogue, And their ingratitude was base. They joined to form a wailing-place. I heard them as I roamed among blind alleys dark and overhung By one-eyed dens. With whining nose against the wall the pack gave tongue: _Behold Thy people, Lord, a race of mourners. Through this Thy sacred dwelling-place they creep Like strangers. Hearken, Lord, in holes and corners We sit alone and weep._ _For Thy decree, most terrible and holy, That as the fathers sow the sons shall reap, For all Thy just affliction of the lowly, We sit alone and weep._ _For all the glory that is now departed, For all the stones that Thou hast made an heap, Yea, for the city of the broken-hearted, We sit alone and weep._ _For all the wealth wherewith Thou hadst endowed her, For all our shepherds gone astray like sheep, For all Thy temple's jewels ground to powder, We sit alone and weep._ _Because our soul is chastened as with lashes, Because Thine anger like a stormy deep Goes over us, in sackcloth and in ashes We sit alone and weep._ Nobody gave them heed; indeed each man was thinking how to speed His interests, and if the prey would satisfy ambition or need. To honest minds with zeal imbued the Pope's indulgence, their own merit Bestowed some licence to be lewd, and take--their preachers said "inherit." Even I who was in love with Christ, I with the conscience clean and cold That hankered not for lands or gold, was wondering how to clinch my hold On reputation, while our chiefs, before we could consolidate, Rode a great wallop round the State and split it into petty fiefs. Their overlords revolted me. Alas, for our brief unity! Edessa snarled at Antioch, Jerusalem at Tripoli. Poor Godfrey, who would not accept a crown where his Redeemer wore Thorns, nor be strong where Jesus wept! From the beginning weakness crept Into our councils. Worse, we watched the bulk of our brave lads disperse Well-pleased. At most we raised the ghost of needful power to hold their post. Franks and Provincials, German brutes that bullied babes and prostitutes, Lombards and Flemings, made for home with clapping and the sound of flutes. It flowed away, the unstable stuff, to whom a cause was but a noun. They stood to sea. Thank heaven 'twas rough! My place was here with my renown. They vanished ... home ... to Sunflower-tress ... home, where a man may die obscure! Far off a carle of Albemarle trolled chanties like a Siren's lure. _East, are you calling still, Who tried your strength of will For naught on brown Ulysses long ago? We have an island too, And haul away from you To cleaner kin that bend a stronger bow._ _Your caravans string out On many a golden route The turbaned Magi's offerings; but we Steer forth on loner trails Through rough wind-scented vales To England, the oasis of the sea._ _Child Jesus chose you, East, Not that He loved us least, But just because His Father had foreseen The dear and only Son Might dwell too long upon Our swinging greys and many-coloured green._ So we were left alone. The spring broke out in buds of bickering. Each summer brought contentious fruit. Strife waxed with every waning king. And I waxed also, better known, resolved to reap what I had sown. My childless manhood fixed my heart. The Holy Land was all my own. I grew in grace with man--I hoped with God; from Beersheba to Dan I went about my Father's work. Faith could not shirk what Faith began. Sometimes qualms came. I looked askance on Bishop Daimbert's schemes to enhance His seat. The native Christians sighed they missed the Caliph's tolerance. Not that had hurt me, but the void which love will make if unemployed. I spent my strength to keep him quiet, and free the thoughts that he decoyed, Till woods and Rhone were out of range. I often wondered at the change In nature's child, in me. The formulae were there. "God's ways are strange." Yet in my struggle with the powers of darkness I recalled the showers Of light that fought the undergrowth to catch the singing of the flowers. Time passed, and no one seemed to reck of Zenghi, the first Atabek, Though every year we failed to act the Saracens grew more compact. In vain I urged that we might fall, so slender was our human wall, So numberless the foe beside the Templars and the Hospital. The answer was that dyke and fosse were useless when we had the Cross, With other relics by the score, to guard against defeat or loss. My prophecies of coming ills fell on deaf ears and weakly wills. I did my best. You know I did, who saw me peer beyond the hills Where Karak like a lighthouse loomed at waves of sand that never spumed, The tideless main, an ocean-plain bare, petrified. Its silence boomed. I saw in all that vastitude, the one, the drab, the many-hued, No sign of life, no moving speck; and yet I knew that trouble brewed. I tortured every hour to find material things to prop behind-- Forgive me, God!--Your earthly realm. The need was great, for it was blind. The mathematics of Abul Hassan, three hundred years at school In Arabic philosophy, showed that the West was still a fool. Nay, gently, call her still a babe. How should she know that I, the Great, Had learned from savages to prate of compass and of astrolabe. Our miracles were not so sure to heal as Rhazes' simplest cure. His friends the moon and stars obeyed the rules that Abul Wafa made. My stolen lore raised me above my fellows. Everything but love Was mine, respect, authority. The jealous Churchmen dared not move. Our infant realm could not dispense with me, its shield and main defence. I knew the Damascene recipe for making steel, and made it cheap. My mind was fertile in resorts. I spent the pilgrims' fees on forts, And settled, for their skill in trade, Venetian slavers at our ports. Howbeit I trembled lest our main enthusiasm should be for gain. I stripped myself to work against the working of the money-brain. And I was glad I passed for mad and single-eyed as Galahad. I sacrificed in saving Christ the profit that I might have had. Nothing that I could do availed. My tongue grew bitter, girded, railed. My labour only builded Me, but not the kingdom. So I failed. Our Viscounts could but show their gums, while from Aleppo, Hama, Homs, The foe crept onward like the months, culling our conquests like ripe plums. For all response in Chastel Blanc and towering Markab-of-the-Sea Some clerkly knight in red-crossed white recited magic formulae; Then darkly hinted science, hell and I were leagued, because their spell Would not or could not stave the blow that I foresaw. Edessa fell. Curse our degenerate Poullains! The breed had need of spurs not reins. To stand an empty sack upright was easier than to warm their veins Save with amours. One night I knelt to pray; but on the battlement Hard by a lordling twanged a harp. I smelt the bastard's eastern scent. He thought his leman lay behind my casement, where the jasmin twined And almost jingled.... Oh the woods at home and whitethroats calling blind! _Suppose you left that window and came down To meet me. Do not turn away. Also you need not frown. I only say: "Suppose."_ _Suppose--you are a woman of resource-- The fastenings of your door undone. No! They are not.... Of course! But, just for fun, Suppose._ _Suppose that--safe among the trees below The terraces--you chanced to find ... Impossible!... I know, But never mind. Suppose._ _Suppose that--being there--an eager arm Drew you towards the little dell.... Why redden? Where's the harm? You might as well Suppose...._ _Suppose that, bending over you, a man Breathed words of which you knew the gist. Suppose it!... Yes, you can.... No, I insist.... Suppose!_ _Suppose you shut the window? Now? Pray do, And take a lonely night to learn This tune shut in with you. Till I return, Suppose...._ Then I peeped out. Some breath divine had made his face, compared with mine, An angel's. Love with all its faults had set there our Creator's sign. That shook me. One of us was wrong. Which? He or I? His soul was vexed Neither by this world nor the next, but floated in a bubble of song. It haunted me, as he had said; it chimed and rhymed about my bed. It filled my head with Sunflower-tress; but she--I writhed--was old or dead. Was all my suffering a waste? Had superstition wed me chaste To Its effect? Was this my Cause? My tutor in the dark grimaced. I saw him snug at home, and how he would have chuckled at my vow! Well, who laughs last.... I pictured him a dotard or in hell by now. I prayed for help all night; and, warned by lost Edessa, Baldwin made Great efforts to placate our God. The answer was a fresh crusade. This was an answer none could doubt. We heard a preacher more devout Than ours was quartering the west, and pulling true believers out. He hight Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the home of light and miracles. The wives and mothers trembled so before his spirit's tentacles, They hid their males--in vain. He swept the Emperor Conrad with him, kept The collar of his pale adept, emasculated Louis Sept. He cured King's Evils, raised the dead, he cast out devils by the gross. 'Twas said he promised us twelve legions of angels.... From the darkest regions Men flocked to Metz and Ratisbon. News came of more than half a million, Not counting those that rode apillion. Our battle was as good as won. Such glorious news might well inflame our hopes. We waited. Nothing came, Not even light Turcopuli nor Conrad's Golden-footed Dame. Our Poullains first began to whine; the fainthearts said the fault was mine. Saint Bernard was the oracle of Europe, I of Palestine. And nothing came ... no troops.... The Greek misled, starved, poisoned, murdered them, Betrayed them to the Turk, whose bleak deserts went over them. Week by week We waited. Nothing. Cadmus saw them cut to bits, Attalia's maw Could not be sated with their ruck. King Louis' mind had just one flaw: He would not hear of strategy, staked all on supernatural help. And nothing came, and nothing came. Our half-bred curs began to yelp "Good God, if truly God is good!" They kissed the Cross. Gems hid the wood. Had He forgotten? Was He deaf? Could such things be? Who understood? Not I, though I had kept my word to save the Lamb by fire and sword. And after twelve long lustra spent in service this was my reward. Louis and Conrad struggled through one day with some small retinue. I watched. Almost I could foretell what they and Providence would do. And I remember, as we fared, a Sufi--so the sect is named-- Sat by the road as though he cared no jot for us, while he declaimed: _Her home is in the heart of spaciousness, In the mid-city of ideals. The site Is harmony, the walls are made of light. There with the mother-thoughts she stands to bless The godlike sons sent forth with her caress To make new worlds. I see them all unite Into the whole that our most starry flight Of worship knew far off, and strove to express. What can we do for her? We run to ask As restless children for a grown-up task, While wisdom in the porch, their kind old host, Smiles at nurse nature, and replies: The most, The least that we can do for Beauty is To love for love's sake and serve God for His._ But Conrad drove his lance in jest right through the ragamuffin's chest, Because his creed was not as ours; and on we rode. I lost my zest. To take Damascus was our plan, relying on a talisman. I knew that this would not suffice, for I was still a fighting man. It ended in repulse and shame. Saint Bernard proved we were to blame For want of faith. Ah, some of us had had too much. We said the same Of him. At our return thick mobs of women filled the church with bobs And bows, poor puppets, trying hard to sing between their stifled sobs: _God, whose Son has fathomed sorrow, Give a mother strength to say: Mine has faced and found To-morrow. I will try to face To-day._ They turned to me. They thought me wise because I had been led by lies To blind myself to them; and now I saw things through a woman's eyes, And I went out. Not yet the end. Since innocence alone could save, Saints hit on infant infantry, and fifty thousand found the grave. My gorge rose, yet I stopped my ears. I had no hope, but I was tarred With fame too much to show my fears. My duty lay in dying hard. Oh irony! That fame increased the more its robes were patched and pieced. My whole ambition was fulfilled when power and confidence had ceased. The women kissed my feet, my horse; they clung to me like my remorse. I that set out to make the world had made myself believe by force. Nay, I that knew we were reprieved at best, had I in truth believed? My youth came back. I seemed to meet my tutor's sneer in every street. Fate cursed us with three minor kings, a leper then. Against these Things Salah-ad-Din combined the entire orient. I wished our fate had wings Instead of feet to end our dumb, keen, futile questionings, to numb The brain that binds us with the chain of kingdom go and kingdom come. One of our knights for plunder's sake undid us, roused the foe who brake In through the pass of Banias, cutting our lands in two like cake. The hour was here, but not the man. That murderer Guy de Lusignan Was sent to head our fight for life. The craven took for talisman ME and my hundred years, alas, a relic of the man I was. I toiled to still our private feuds. We marched upon Tiberias, For none would listen when I urged our leaders to await attack. We marched across the waterless inferno. Summer burnt us black. The Moslems scorched us with Greek fire. As rain upon a funeral pyre Their arrows hissed in sheets upon the smoking scrub. "Go on!" "Retire!" Our rabble cried, starting aside like broken bows; they tried to hide, Split, fled for refuge to a hill, did nothing while the Templars died. When all was lost I cut my way out through the thicket of the fray, And galloped for Jerusalem to adjure Guy's Queen to stand at bay. In this last desperate passage each proud noble still opposed his friend. A little while and we were penned, and yet a little while a breach Was made. Jehovah's chosen seat was tottering, but no Paraclete Came down to comfort us. I made some sallies. Then the Queen would treat. Perhaps in our appeal for ruth my wording stumbled on the truth, "One God that went by many names," or else I knew Him in my youth, Or else that Sufi haunted me with something that I could not see, Something that only had not been because we would not let it be. And when the foe marched in, I own that I was thinking of the Rhone Long, long ago, and wondering--a child once more--if it had grown. Yet there remained the sharpest cup to drain: the moan of us went up, When from the topmost dome was hurled the Sign that should have ruled the world. Down, down it rumbled with our grand designs. All we had built or planned, Toiled, bled for, crumbled at a touch, was ruined like a house of sand. So soon we pass. The wind knows why. The efforts of a century, Three generations' handiwork failed in the twinkling of an eye. And I was sad to think that shadows occupy us all. I had No hope of earth. What boots a toy that thinks its maker raving mad? My soul had passed through every phase and, counting forty thousand days, Was farther off than at the start from comprehending heaven's ways Or bowing to them. I came nearest when I pressed my childish ear Earthward through briar and bramble bowers to catch the singing of the flowers. The last remains of faith were shaken when I, the oracle, was taken. My pride was made to sleep in chains. I prayed that I might never waken, But woke. They gave me to a _rais_ who wanted cattle, not advice. He flogged me down to Damietta. I was old and fetched no price. Nathless my battling heart was brave enough to work me till I dropped. I passed for twopence to a Copt who sold me as a galley-slave To Muscat. In the rhythmic stroke, old, undefeated, gnarled as oak I creaked and strained against my fate, until that Sufi-something broke. 'Twas not my heart. An inner morn put the dark age in me to scorn, And in the light I found myself, a child at play with worlds unborn, For all that I had thought and read, and fought and watched the world be led By any who contrived to cut a knot with that blunt tool, the head. I laughed to think how sparrows might look down upon our highest flight, While each succeeding age would have its oracle or stagyrite, Would trace the good we never did, the evil that we never saw, And out of our blind pyramid extract a stepping-stone to Law. Here, where ambition had to cease in servitude, I tasted peace, Free of illusion stretched and yawned. A fool would clamour for release. I make the rowers' bench a throne to think, and thought implies Alone, Of changing woods and endless streams. My happiness is all my own. And often, when my mates deplore a brother who shall row no more, I talk about my wolf-cub, Life. They think I speak in metaphor. They gather round me all agog, they think a chronicle and log Of Progress lies in withered hands. Their cry is for an epilogue. Has aught been drafted yet? A blot, an echo void and polyglot. Each century is written off as preface. Yes, most true.... Of what? My gathered weight had held me bound to find for every fog a ground, For every riddle a reply, an end to Being that goes round. Now I can say, I do not know if there will be a book at all, Or if the deepest chapters go beyond some writing on the wall, Though wiser worlds will yet embark, sworn to eclipse our sorry trades, Succeed, and leave their little mark: a dynasty of thought that fades, Fresh undergrowths of formulae. Through these no _human_ eye can see The open glade--the _last_ crusade, in which Jerusalem might be The symbol of all peopled space, and Time an emblem of the day On which the nations march as one to liberate and not to slay. A story has no finish when it leads to nowhere out of ken? O friend, the lack of knowledge brings wisdom within the reach of men; For whether hope can ever fit the future matters not a whit. My duty is to tug my oar--so long as I am chained to it. XIX FUSION It was fulfilled. The giant _dhow_ bestirred Herself, burst from her slender moorings, ran Exulting on her course beyond the green Thin shallows to the deeper violet Of that great gem wherein the continents Are flaws. With creaking oars and fluttering sails The winged ghost swept outward. On the prow Unveiled the Queen stood whiter than the sails, And save the revelation made no sign; And all the sound of singing was brought low. Then, as the vision vanished in the hushed Twilight that painted out the caravan, Leaving the pilgrims but a _burnus_-blur On the drab canvas of the shore, a wail Rose, and to them the Dreamer's last reply: "The aimless spindrift mingles with the scats Where suddenly the desert is the beach. A low wind whimpers up and down the flats Seeking some obstacle to lend it speech. "The sky bleeds pale as from a mortal wound, Darkening the waters. To a treble E Gulls stiffly wheel their nomad escort round A white sail dwindling in the impassive sea. "A last beam smites it with a benison. The lantern twinkles fainter at its mast. It bears the purpose in me that is gone, The only thing that cannot be, the past. "Let there be night. Shall evensong complain? My love was utter. Now I seek no sign. Mine eyes have seen, and shall not see again. Out of the deep shall call no voice of mine. "Yet I, whose happiness is hidden from view, Have climbed the hill and touched eternity, And Pisgah is a memory--of you, A white sail sinking in the summer sea." The ship drove spaceward to the skyline's crater, The last of day flared vibrant as a cry, And in the Dreamer Emptiness loomed greater Than the unrifted pumice of the sky. He turned to see the friends whose hope had ended Like his beside the gulf. He was alone. The singers and the glory that had blended With meaner notes and lowly, all were gone Into thin air. But, patient of his tether, Enduring as the dream he would not break, Only old Tous remained. As back together They fared, once more it seemed the camel spake: "Lo, these the fleeting and the true, The keen to sacrifice and slow, The plumed, the crawling, all were You That started hither long ago. For man is many when begun, But Love can weave his ends to one. "The new, the ancient, song and prose, The lower road, the higher aim, The clean, the draggled, dust and snows Were you the striving, you the same. Pride and endeavour, love and loss, The pattern is the threads that cross. "Tilth, waste and water, sand and sap, Tare, thorn and thistle, wine and oil, Run through _your_ Nature like a map, Are YOU. The ores that vein the soil Of time and substance manifold Await the hour that makes them gold, "That found the force of you dispersed On all adventure save a quest, And part perhaps was on the worst. It sent you all upon the best, Wherein the journey is the goal. Now leaving you they leave you whole. "The rabble melts, but more remains: The golden opportunity By which the choir in us attains Not unison but unity. We feel the sunbeam, not the motes. The Voice is made of many notes. "Slave, merchant, scholar, fighting-man, The gambling, stumbling, praying kith We called the Singing Caravan, Have made their song at least no myth Not dawn to which yon skylark soared But earth is his and your reward. "The story ends, but not the book. Sufi, the Queen that you ensued Led and shall lead you still to look On peace--it is not solitude. Through her your warring kingdoms met, And here is room for no regret." So Dreamer-of-the-Age returned With comfort, all his being fused At last, and thus at night he mused Beside the fire that in him burned: "Heirs of the beauty yet to be, Hail, from however far ahead Or out of sight I hear you tread The dust that made this tale and me. "Each day shall raise me to rejoice That lovers such as we must bear The unbroken chain of life and share Its thanksgiving. Perhaps my voice "Shall be the servant of your mind, Your linkman waiting in the arch Of phantom city-gates to march With you by secret ways. The wind "Shall tell me of you, he and I Be keenly with you, when you go Forth in my footsteps and the glow Of movement, steadfast to deny "Only the frailer self. My grief Shall answer your unspoken word Through blithe interpreters, a bird Waking, the sounds of rill and leaf. "By many a caravanserai I shall not fail to watch you come, You of some far millennium, Who, listening to the bird, will say: "'I seem to know that tune of his; He sings what all can understand.' In the clear water dip your hand: 'His deepest note was only this.' "You shall be glad of me, the shade, Sighing 'O friend.' And I shall keep The benediction of your sleep; And, when the woods of darkness fade, "Shall waken with you, I that had Love to the full, and praised my lot, Trusting in truth to be forgot For worthier verse. Ah, make me glad, "You that come after me, and call From summits that outstrip my hopes. Yet I shall linger on the slopes And dwell with those who gave their all." XX LONG LEAVE I bow my head, O brother, brother, brother, But may not grudge you that were All to me. Should any _one_ lament when this our Mother Mourns for so many sons on land and sea. God of the love that makes two lives as one Give also strength to see that England's will be done. Let it be done, yea, down to the last tittle, Up to the fullness of all sacrifice. Our dead feared this alone--to give too little. Then shall the living murmur at the price? The hands withdrawn from ours to grasp the plough Would suffer only if the furrow faltered now. Know, fellow-mourners--be our cross too grievous-- That One who sealed our symbol with His blood Vouchsafed the vision that shall never leave us, Those humble crosses in the Flanders mud; And think there rests all-hallowed in each grave A life given freely for the world He died to save. And, ages hence, dim tramping generations Who never knew and cannot guess our pain-- Though history count nothing less than nations, And fame forget where grass has grown again-- Shall yet remember that the world is free. It is enough. For this is immortality. I raise my head, O brother, brother, brother. The organ sobs for triumph to my heart. What! Who will think that ransomed earth can smother Her own great soul, of which you are a part! The requiem music dies as if it _knew_ The inviolate peace where 'tis already well with you. EPILOGUE "It's not as easy as you think," The nettled poet sighed. "It's not as good as I could wish," The publisher replied. "It might," the kindly critic wrote, "Have easily been _worse_." "We will not read it anyhow," The public said, "it's verse." PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS WEST NORWOOD, LONDON TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE All unusual, archaic and inconsistent spellings and usage have been maintained as in the original text. The only changes made were: In the original text, the words "polymetis" and "hoi polloi" were written in Greek. I added the entries for "In Memoriam" and "Acknowledgements" to the Table of Contents. End of Project Gutenberg's The Singing Caravan, by Robert Vansittart *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SINGING CARAVAN *** ***** This file should be named 49385.txt or 49385.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/3/8/49385/ Produced by Emmanuel Ackerman, University of California Libraries, Microsoft (scanning) and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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