Part 7

I was—how many a time!— That Second Calendar, Son of a King, On whom ’twas vehemently enjoined, Pausing at one mysterious door, To pry no closer, but content his soul With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest For idleness and ungovernable Fate. And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame (That wonder-working word!), Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans, And soaring, soaring on From air to air, came charging to the ground Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds, And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled Flicked at me with his tail, And left me blinded, miserable, distraught (Even as I was in deed, When doctors came, and odious things were done On my poor tortured eyes With lancets; or some evil acid stung And wrung them like hot sand, And desperately from room to room Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way), To get to Bagdad how I might. But there I met with Merry Ladies. O you three— Safie, Amine, Zobëidé—when my heart Forgets you all shall be forgot! And so we supped, we and the rest, On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates, Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And Haroun Laughed out of his lordly beard On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three For all their Mossoul habits). And outside The Tigris, flowing swift Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars; The vast, blue night Was murmurous with peris’ plumes And the leathern wings of genies; words of power Were whispering; and old fishermen, Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales Worth in the Caliph’s Kitchen pieces of gold: Or copper vessels, stopped with lead, Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed, In durance under potent charactry Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed In Life as in some olden mirror’s quaint, Bewildering angles, so would Life Flash light on light back on the Book; and both Were changed. Once in a house decayed From better days, harbouring an errant show (For all its stories of dry-rot Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax, Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), I wandered; and no living soul Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared Upon them staring—staring. Till at last, Three sets of rafters from the streets, I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room, With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene, Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set, Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, With an aspect of frills And dimities and dishonoured privacy That made you hanker and hesitate to look, A Woman with her litter of Babes—all slain, All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes Staring—still staring; so that I turned and ran As for my neck, but in the street Took breath. The same, it seemed, And yet not all the same, I was to find, As I went up! For afterwards, Whenas I went my round alone— All day alone—in long, stern, silent streets, Where I might stretch my hand and take Whatever I would: still there were Shapes of Stone, Motionless, lifelike, frightening—for the Wrath Had smitten them; but they watched, This by her melons and figs, that by his rings And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze, The Painted Eyes insufferable, Now, of those grisly images; and I Pursued my best-belovéd quest, Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear. So the night fell—with never a lamplighter; And through the Palace of the King I groped among the echoes, and I felt That they were there, Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes, Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far A Voice! And in a little while Two tapers burning! And the Voice, Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was—whose? Whose but Zobëidé’s, The lady of my heart, like me A True Believer, and like me An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew Swiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards, The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship, Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad, Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman’s hand, And, turning broadside on, As the most iron would, was haled and sucked Nearer, and nearer yet; And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now That swallowed sea and sky; and then, Anchors and nails and bolts Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang, A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay, A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal About the waters; and her crew Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left To drown. All the long night I swam; But in the morning, O, the smiling coast Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike, Skirted with shelving sands! And a great wave Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive. So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes, And, faring inland, in a desert place I stumbled on an iron ring— The fellow of fifty built into the Quays: When, scenting a trap-door, I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade Stuck into wood. And then, The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs, Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault, So neat with niche on niche it might have been Our beer-cellar but for the rows Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist’s jars) Full to the wide, squat throats With gold-dust, but a-top A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things I knew for olives! And far, O, far away, The Princess of China languished! Far away Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief Of Eunuchs and the privilege Of going out at night To play—unkenned, majestical, secure— Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped Like Tigris shore for shore! Haply a Ghoul Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon, A thighbone in his fist, and glared At supper with a Lady: she who took Her rice with tweezers grain by grain. Or you might stumble—there by the iron gates Of the Pump Room—underneath the limes— Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers, Just as the civil Genie laid him down. Or those red-curtained panes, Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes, Might turn a caravansery’s, wherein You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk, And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, You’d not have given away For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous You had that dark and disleaved afternoon Escaped on a roc’s claw, Disguised like Sindbad—but in Christmas beef! And all the blissful while The schoolboy satchel at your hip Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers Of Tartary and the bazaars, Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.—

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart The magian East: thus the child eyes Spelled out the wizard message by the light Of the sober, workaday hours They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind In ancient Severn’s arm, Amongst her water-meadows and her docks, Whose floating populace of ships— Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines, Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters—brought To her very doorsteps and geraniums The scents of the World’s End; the calls That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride Like fire on some high errand of the race; The irresistible appeals For comradeship that sound Steadily from the irresistible sea. Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale, Telling itself anew In terms of living, labouring life, Took on the colours, busked it in the wear Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance, The Angel-Playmate, raining down His golden influences On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did, Walked with me arm in arm, Or left me, as one bediademed with straws And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart Who had the gift to seek and feel and find His fiery-hearted presence everywhere. Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things, Sends the same silver dews Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies On some poor collier-hamlet—(mound on mound Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk Sullenly smoking over a row Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings Of hurtling, tipping trams)— As on the amorous nightingales And roses of Shíraz, or the walls and towers Of Samarcand—the Ineffable—whence you espy The splendour of Ginnistan’s embattled spears, Like listed lightnings. Samarcand! That name of names! That star-vaned belvedere Builded against the Chambers of the South! That outpost on the Infinite! And behold! Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide Might overtake you: for one fringe, One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one Floats founded vague In lubberlands delectable—isles of palm And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas, The promise of wistful hills— The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

BRIC-À-BRAC

1877–1888

‘The tune of the time.’—HAMLET, concerning OSRIC

BALLADE OF A TOYOKUNI COLOUR-PRINT

To W. A.

WAS I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? A histrion angular and profound? A priest? a porter?—Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old Japan.

As here you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting—even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o’ the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in old Japan.

Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, A blue canal the lake’s blue bound Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo! Touched with the sundown’s spirit and glow, I see you turn, with flirted fan, Against the plum-tree’s bloomy snow . . . I loved you once in old Japan!

Envoy

Dear, ’twas a dozen lives ago; But that I was a lucky man The Toyokuni here will show: I loved you—once—in old Japan.

BALLADE (DOUBLE REFRAIN) OF YOUTH AND AGE

I. M. Thomas Edward Brown (1829–1896)

SPRING at her height on a morn at prime, Sails that laugh from a flying squall, Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme— Youth is the sign of them, one and all. Winter sunsets and leaves that fall, An empty flagon, a folded page, A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball— These are a type of the world of Age.

Bells that clash in a gaudy chime, Swords that clatter in onsets tall, The words that ring and the fames that climb— Youth is the sign of them, one and all. Hymnals old in a dusty stall, A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage, The scene of a faded festival— These are a type of the world of Age.

Hours that strut as the heirs of time, Deeds whose rumour’s a clarion-call, Songs where the singers their souls sublime— Youth is the sign of them, one and all. A staff that rests in a nook of wall, A reeling battle, a rusted gage, The chant of a nearing funeral— These are a type of the world of Age.

Envoy

Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl— Youth is the sign of them, one and all. A smouldering hearth and a silent stage— These are a type of the world of Age.

BALLADE (DOUBLE REFRAIN) OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS

To W. H.

WITH a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams— Midsummer days! Midsummer days! The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise— Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

The wood’s green heart is a nest of dreams, The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams— Midsummer days! Midsummer days! In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways, All secret shadows and mystic lights, Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze— Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

There’s a music of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams— Midsummer days! Midsummer days! A soul from the honeysuckle strays, And the nightingale as from prophet heights Sings to the Earth of her million Mays— Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

Envoy

And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays— Midsummer days! Midsummer days! It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights— Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!