of ambergris pourWith myrrh brought out of Lahore,
And musk of Khoten, and good
Aloes and sandal-wood.
Rubies, a tragacanth-red,
Angered in armlet and anklet
Dragon-like eyes that bled:
Bangles and necklaces dangled
Diamonds, whose prisms were angled,
Over veil and from coiffure, each
Or apricot-colored or peach.
And Ghoram now smites her lute,
Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila,
Or amorous ghazals may suit: —
And the flambeaux snap and wave
Barbaric on free and slave,
Rich fabrics and bezels of gems,
And roses in anadems.
Sherbets in ewers of gold,
Fruits in salvers carnelian;
Flagons of grotesque mold,
Made of a sapphire glass,
Stained with wine of Shirâz;
Shaddock and melon and grape
On plate of an antique shape:
Vases of frost and of rose,
An alabaster graven,
Filled with the mountain snows;
Goblets of mother-of-pearl,
One filigree silver-swirl;
Vessels of gold foamed up
With spray of spar on the cup. —
When a slave bursts in with the cry:
"The eunuchs! the Khalif's eunuchs!
With scimitars bared draw nigh!
Wesif and Afif and he,
Chief of the hideous three,
Mesrour! the Sultan 's seen
'Mid a hundred weapons' sheen!"…
We, never had parted, no!
As parted those lovers fearful;
But kissing you so and so,
When they came they had found us dead
On the flowers our blood dyed red;
Our lips together and
The dagger in my hand.
O cities built by music! lyres of love
Strung to a songful sea! did I but own
One harp chord of one broken barbiton
What had I budded for our life thereof?
In docile shadows under bluebell skies
A home upon the poppied edge of eve,
Beneath lone peaks the splendors never leave,
In lemon orchards whence the egret flies.
Where pitying gray the pitiless eyes of Death
Blight no slight bud unfostered, I have thought;
Deep, lily-deep, pearl-pale daturas, fraught
With dewy fragrance like an angel's breath.
Sleep in the days; the twilights tuned and tame
Through mockbirds throating to attentive stars;
Each morn outrivalling each in opal bars;
Eves preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.
O country by the undiscovered sea!
The dream infolds thee and the way is dim —
With head not high, what if I follow him,
Love – with the madness and the melody?
An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings o' the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry
The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly: —
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
An elf there is where the clover tips
A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,
Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,
In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;
Gay gold brocade from head to knee,
Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;
Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay
To the bandit elf of the Fairy way, —
O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.
Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;
Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,
Seals their colors in tubes of dew;
Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing —
The evening moth is another thing:
The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,
The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;
He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;
Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm's eye: —
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple and slips along
The strings of a lute or a lover's song;
Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,
And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;
Hides unhidden, where none may know,
In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow —
O ho, O ho! – a friend or foe?
Who the loser, who the winner,
If the Fancy fail as preacher? —
None who loved was yet beginner
Though another's love-beseecher;
Love's revealment 's of the inner
Life and deity, the teacher.
Who may falsify the feeling
To the lover who is loser?
Has she felt: – the mere revealing
Of the passion 's his accuser;
She conceals it; the concealing
Is her own love's self-abuser.
One hath said, no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth —
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love
