The Singing Caravan: A Sufi Tale

by Baron Robert Gilbert Vansittart Vansittart

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 Karûn,

Paused, and admired the view.

"The ripples took her, trying not to leap,

But, copying the uneventful sky,

Serenely burnished where the stream grows deep

They smoothened their staccato lullaby.

And so she fell asleep

"Where no sharp rock disturbs the river bed,

A moving peace, whose eddies turn half-fain

Towards their youth's tumultuous watershed,

And slow blank scutcheons widen like a stain

Portending Sound is dead.

"No herd or village fouls the shining tide,

Till ocean lays a suzerain's armistice

On brawling tributaries. Like a bride

Greeting her lord it laved her with a kiss,

And left her purified.

"But the sea-Jinn, who dwell and dress in mauve,

And hunt blind monsters down the corridors

Between sunk vessels—fishers know the drove,

Their horns and conches and the quarry's roars

In autumn—hold that love

"Should meet with more than pardon. So the pack

Spliced up a wand of all the spillikin spars

Flagged with the purple fantasies of wrack,

Composed a spell not one of them could parse,

And tried it on the sack.

"'Twas filled with pearls! Each Jinni dipped his hand,

And scattered trails through labyrinths of ooze,

Or sowed gems thick upon the golden sand,

Festooned a bed from Bahrein to Ormuz,

Muscat to Ras Naband....

"Hajji, a deeper meaning than appears

Beneath the surface of my song may lurk

Like Jinn. How oft the crown of gathered years,

The dazzling things for which men thank their work,

Are made by Woman's tears."

Tous shook his head and grunted, ceaselessly

The caravan limped onward to the Gulf.

---

XIII
THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER

Serdar-i-Jang, the Wazir of the west,

Of all mankind had served his country best

By weeding it. The terror of his name

Lapped up the barren Pusht-i-kuh like flame,

Till the Shah smiled: "My other lords of war lose

Battles, but he wrings love from my Baharlus."

He smote them hip and thigh. The man was brave.

Having four wives, he needs must take for slave

Whatever captive baggage crossed his path,

And never feared love for its aftermath.

Thus fared the Wazir while his locks were blue.

The silver in them found him captive too.

The singing caravan in chorus flowed

Past the clay porticoes of his abode.

She came, he saw, was conquered—like a puppet

Drawn to the window, to the street and up it,

Forth to the desert, leaving in the lurch

His pleasant wars and policies to search

For what? He knew not. Haply for the truth

Whose home is open eyes, not dreams or youth.

But this he dimly knew, that something strange,

Beauty, had come within his vision's range;

And a new splendour, running through the world,

Drummed at the postern of his senses, hurled

Him forth, this warrior proud and taciturn,

Footsore upon a pilgrimage to learn

Humility.... These beggars, in whose wake

He toiled, ne'er paused for him to overtake

Their echoes. When at dusk he joined their ring

None rose or bowed. All watched him. Could he sing?

And he could not, for never had he thrown

His days away on verse! He sat alone,

So that his silence stamped him with the badge

Of hanger-on or menial of this haj.

Thrust as he would with much unseemly din,

He found no place beside the palanquin,

Till Seyid Rida, scholar of Nejaf,

Took pity on him, saying: "You shall laugh

At these black days when, having served your time,

You share the sovereignty of Persian rhyme.

Be patient, pray to Allah, O my son,

For power of worship. It shall come anon...."

Seyid Rida spoke in vain. The Wazir's place

So far behind the Queen, her perfect face

But half-divined, as Sight denied to Faith,

A doubt lest love itself should be a wraith

Dazzling but mocking him, these stirred his passion

To sworn defiance, to his last Circassian

And thoughts of many a woman taken by force,

Restive and then submissive as a horse.

And now.... He followed in the wake of vision

Lofty and pure as Elburz snows. Derision

Would follow him in turn!... He shook his fist

Toward the feet his soul would fain have kissed:

"Oh, I was born for women, women, women.

Through my still boyhood rang the first alarm;

And since that terror ever fresh invaders

Have occupied and sacked me to their harm.

I am the cockpit where endemic fever

Holds the low country in a broken lease

From waves that ruined dykes appear to welcome.

Only one great emotion spares me—Peace!

"I have grown up for women, women, women;

And suffering has had her fill of me.

My ears still echo with receding laughter,

As shells retain the voices of the sea.

I am the gateway only, not the garden,

That opens from a crowded thoroughfare.

I stand ajar to every passing fancy,

And all have knocked, but none have rested there.

"And I shall die for women, women, women,

But not for love of them. Adventure calls

Or waits with old romance to disappoint me

Behind the promise of surrendered walls.

I am the vessel of some mad explorer,

That sails to seek for treasure in strange lands

Without a steersman in a crew of gallants,

And, finding fortune, ends with empty hands."

A deathly silence fell. Green-turbaned men

Fell noiselessly to sharpening their knives

On their bare hardened feet. Seyid Rida sighed:

"Alas, your heart is set upon reward

For gifts of self. You cannot understand

Love loves for nothing, brother. Those who serve

God the most purely cannot count that He

Will love them in return...."

The Wazir scowled.

But Dreamer-of-the-Age took him aside,

"I would unfold a story like a carpet.

The camel Tous told it to me last night:

"King Suleiman's wives were as jewels, his jewels as stones of the desert

In number. His concubines herded as desert-gazelles in their grace,

That answered his bidding as meekly as all his wild animal kingdom,

The beasts and the birds and the fishes. Yet the world was as pitch on his face.

"Now it chanced that the ruler of Saba had news by a merchant of peacocks

From this king like a hawk-god of Egypt, whose beak was set deep in the gloom

Of his grape-purple beard, and she said: 'We shall see how his vanities stead him

When from under the arch of his eyebrows he sees my feet enter his room.'

"For her feet were far whiter than manna. Her body was white as the cry

Of a child when the chords of hosanna draw the beauty of holiness nigh.

The droop of her eyelids would fan a revolt from Baghdad to Lake Tsana,

Her fingers were veined alabaster. The sprites of her escort would sigh,

"As they bathed her with sun set in amber and cooled in the snow of a cloudlet,

And taught her chief eunuch to clamber up moonbeams as fleet as a ghost:

These, lavish of reed-pipe and tamburine, slaves of the Son of Daoud, let

Her palanquin down into Zeila—gambouge and magenta, the coast!"

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

"Round the harbour a hoopoe was strutting, for Suleiman's Seal had appointed

Him messenger-bird, and he thought: 'If I bring the good news of this beauty,

This Sovereign of Silkiness, I shall harvest great thanks and promotion.'

So he flew to the Presence and twittered a text on the pleasure of Duty.

"'Fulfiller of faint Superstition, whose hand rolls the eyeballs of Thunder,

And lightens forked tongues on a mission of menace to bat or to eagle!

There comes to your portal a vision whose light shall make Israel wonder.

Immortal her beauty and mortal her glance that is soft as a seagull.'"

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

"But Suleiman, sated with women and governance, lifted his beak

From his beard. Naught escaped the magician, not a thought, not a tone. Ah, he knew

All! He said: 'I have measured your mind as my pity has measured my people.

We shall speak of reward when she comes; I may live to regret it—and you!

"'Lo, I am the servant of God, whom I serve as you serve me, not asking

For pay by each day or each act, but just for the general sum.

The work of the world must be done without wage to be done to our credit.

We shall profit in claiming our guerdon not by what we are but become.'

"So the Queen came to Kuddus. Mashallah! Shall a picture be limned of her coming!

Flushed dancers and lutists athrumming light-limbed as Daoud round the Ark!

Crushed roadway and crowd-applause rumbled, loud music, hushed barbarous mumming!

To the cry, 'On to Sion' above her, this lover rode straight at her mark!"

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

"She had but to flatter the wizard to win him. He said to the hoopoe:

'I will haggle no more. You shall learn to your cost what the bargainer buys,

Whose faith levies toll upon duty, whose trust will not serve me on trust,

Or love for Love. On your head be it.' The hoopoe said: 'Cheshm—on my eyes!'

"All other birds fainted with envy, as Suleiman lifted a digit.

Thereon was the Ring-of-most-Magic. Then he spat on the dust from his bed,

And the miracle came! for the hoopoe went swaggering out of the presence

(So he struts in his walking to-day) with a crown of pure gold on his head.

"But the Jews thus learnt avarice. Some one spread news of the bird-coronation

To the ends of the kingdom. The tribes ran out as one man armed with lime,

Bows, nets, slings—and slew the hoopoes for the sake of their crowns. There was profit

In sport then; none other has liked them so well since King Suleiman's time.

"They divided the spoil till in Israel only our messenger-bird

Survived with two fellows.... He fled to Suleiman's closet for bast,

Sobbing, 'Spare us, O king! Make a sign with the ring that men sing of! We fare as

Amalekites. If I have sinned, I am punished. We three are the last

"'Of our race. In your grace turn your face to our case. We place hope in your favour!

My brood is a Yahudi's food. Israel—who disputes it—insane

For gain. We are slain all day long by the strong sons of Cain. Let us waive our

Gold bane for plain down, lest we drown in our own blood! Discrown us again!'"

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

"The King made reply. He was sadder than rain in the willows of Jordan.

'We are God's passing thoughts. They alone that await their fulfilment are wise.

You shall be for a warning, O hoopoe. I had given you more than gold-wages

If you had believed we not only had ears, I and Allah, but eyes!

"'Yet giving is fraught with forgiveness. Now therefore the crown you did covet

Is gone. You are healed of your pride; you shall live till the Angel of Death errs

From Allah's command. By my Ring-of-most-Magic the gold is transmuted.

Go forth! He has set for a sign on your brow a tiara of feathers.'

"So the hoopoe went forth in the glory of plumes that he won in this wise

And wears. Then the hunters, assembled from the uttermost quarters of Sham, should

Have shot, but did not, for they said: 'What a head! We will not waste an arrow

On sport of this sort. We are sold! We were told it was gold and....'"

Tamam Shud

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

But as he slept that night the Dreamer prayed

That understanding might bedew his head.

And so it was. The fountain of the Dawn

Rose in the whiteness of the month Rajab,

Washing the desert stones, and made each body

Shine as the sun-swift chariot of a soul.

While the last swimmer in the sea of slumber,

Out of the deep, its jungled bottom, its ghosts,

Its weight and wonders, rises to the surface

In final breaths of sleep, the Wazir stirred

And flung out joyful arms. Not otherwise

The groping diver in the Gulf of Pearls,

Having achieved adventure, comes to light

And grasps the painted gunwale—with his prize.

"For every hour and day

Of youth that spelled delay

In finding you, I pray

To life for pardon,

I that long since have faced

My task in patient haste:

Out of my former waste

To make your garden.

"With these soiled hands I made

My Self (man's hardest trade).

The sun was you: the shade

My toil, my seed did.

I drove my strong soul through

Years in the thought of you,

For whom my garden grew,

And grew unheeded;

"For you, an episode

That lay beside your road,

For me, my long abode,

My will's whole centre.

Lo now my task fulfilled,

Yet not the hope that thrilled

The stubborn realm I tilled

For you to enter.

"Ah, must all sacrifice

Be weighed with balance nice!

To ask the gods our price

Makes all creeds shoddy.

Then should I bargain now—

Troubling my worship—how

You will reward my vow

Of soul and body?

"I have not striven in vain,

Though all my poor domain

Cries daily for your reign.

I hold its treasure,

A source of splendour, known

Haply to me alone,

A boundless love—my own.

Had you but leisure

"To pause beside this spring

A moment, harkening

How through my silence sing

The dreams that here rest,

I yet might make you see

Some of the You in Me.

This song not I but we

Have written, dearest."

Long ropes of stillness joined the caravan

Closer together; no man spoke a word,

Till Dreamer-of-the-Age: "Friend, go up higher

At the Queen's right hand." Seyid Rida smiled:

"I knew you would outrun us." The Wazir

Heard neither fame nor blame, and so was blest

Because he sought praise only of the Queen.

---

XIV
THE MORAL OF THE SCHOLAR

At Ispahan the notables were met

In conclave. Seyid Rida, scholar scamp—

As Dawlatshah records—perched in the porch:

"Round the table sit the sages—

Different views and different ages—

Secretaries scribble pages,

Taking down each 'er' and 'hem,'

Taking down each word they utter

Like the solemn measured sputter

Of fat raindrops from a gutter.

I speak last of them.

"Outside in the summer weather

Birds are talking all together,

While a tiny pecked-out feather

Flutters past the pane.

Dare you own: The work before us

Seems at moments like their chorus,

Just a little more sonorous,

Similar in strain?

"Have a care! The bird that chatters

Is the only bird that matters,

Heedless of the hand that scatters

Grains of sense or chaff

Mid your Barmecides and Cleons.

I have listened here for æons

To these rooster-flights and pæans.

No one heard me laugh.

"Parrot, jackdaw, jay, and pigeon,

Prose would be the whole religion

Of the Nephelococcygian

State to which you steer.

If the earth remains a youngster

With some waywardness amongst her

Virtues, I should thank the songster

Whom you cannot hear.

"Tits that swing upon a thistle,

Wrens and chats that pipe and whistle,

Join their notes to our epistle,

Where the bee-fraught lime

Orchestrates the lark's espousal

Not of causes but carousal:

Owl, we hear you charge the ouzel

With a waste of time!

"Princeling, a fantastic prophet

Tweaks your robe and bids you doff it,

Offers you escape from Tophet

On the wings of words.

Spread them bravely, fly the town, sell

All you have for this one counsel:

Sing and never mind the groundsel!

Come, we too are birds."

Thereat the conclave fluttered and flew out,

And I have heard them on the Persian roads,

In half-dead cities. History repeats

Nothing except the rose. But Persians say

This was the last they heard of government.

---

XV
THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH

Alas! 'Twas time to go—"Conceal the wine,

The purple and the yellow infidel!"—

Rice cooked in saffron, honey-cakes, and mast

With many-coloured shirini were all

Packed up in paunches capon-lined....

The Queen

Sailed through the city, mounted high on Tous,

Full in the moonlight, purer than the moon,

Whose beauty, being weighed with hers, the scale

Sent up to heaven and left the Queen on earth....

Followed quick tumbles to the lambent street,

Graspings of shoes, and search for garments lost,

With tunes that mounted all awry as flame

Draught-blown, short breaths and straggling feet.

The Dreamer

Reddened and drooped his head; for at the Gate

Sat a portentous Sheikh, thrice great in girth,

Ali-el-Kerbelaï, Known-of-Men,

To whom—he slept all day—his nightly school

Resorted in the porch. He saw, and shrugged

His shoulders, rounded in glory like the hills

That drift and clash about the Gulf of Pearls—

Bahreinis tell the tale lest rival dhows

Should venture into trade—and thus held forth:

"Gossips, I have watched fools wander through this gate

In generations. Never have I seen

Men so bewitched by one closed palanquin,

So little fain to chatter with the great,

So blind, or single-eyed, they did not see

Ali-el-Kerbelaï, even me.

"Poor souls! Dusk swamps our wriggling thoroughfares

Like trenches; and I rub my hands to think

How I to-night in coolth shall sleep and drink,

While sunrise takes these vagrants unawares.

Madmen set out each day to beard the sun,

And seventy years ago Your Slave was one.

"When all the world was young, that is when I

Was young, I promised Allah to be wise,

And started on the road of enterprise

That leads towards the snow-capped hills of Why,

Passing my hand across my shaven brow

Heavy with all the lower lore of How."

Ali-el-Kerbelaï sighed his soul

Out of his nostrils pious and serene,

For the swift curtain of the night had slid

Along the rings of stillness, as he peered

Into the plain. The singing caravan

Had dwindled slowly to a speck of white.

Then said the sage: "Behold they go to nothing,

These lovers, these far-eyed. To think they passed

Within a foot of wisdom and my robe!

Alas, they passed and knew not. 'Tis the risk

Of all such noisy dreamers. Ah, my head

Pities.... Well, God is great. And God made me.

"Thus first I reached Mohammerah, whose sheikh

In speechless gratitude besought a boon—

To make me eunuch in his anderûn—

For I had talked away his stomach-ache.

And of this epoch I need only say

I had fresh dates for dinner every day.

"But I was young. I spurned the unmanly job,

For I loved conquest, and the world lay flat

Before me like a purple praying-mat,

And all young women made my heart kebob,

Until the sheikh conceived himself disgraced.

Then I took ship from Basra—in some haste.

"We put to sea, fair sirs, a foul-faced sea

Puckered with viciousness and green with hate

Of all the sons of Adam; and black fate

Conspired with her to take account of me,

For all the Jinn who lurk among the gales

Came down to fecundate our bellied sails.

"They blew. They thrust my skull against the sky,

The jade-backed Jinn disguised as ocean-swell,

But I saw through them.... Down we went to hell,

Where Iblis tried to teach me blasphemy

In vain. No devil's wile could make me speak.

Thus I learned self-control. (I was so weak.)

"We drifted past bare cliff and jungle sedge,

Past spouting loose volcanoes known as whales,

And sirens that blew kisses with their tails,

Till we fell over the horizon's edge,

Fell sheer three thousand parasangs. And there

I first discovered that the world is square.

"We were in China, sir. The Home of Yellows,

Soil, porcelain, manuscripts, men.... Here I spent

Six weeks in stuffing to my heart's content

The thought-scraps given to these whoreson fellows

By heaven. My zeal picked all tradition's locks,

And knowledge opened like a lacquered box

"Wrought with strange figures.... Now I learned by heart

Eleven score ways of dodging every sin.

So, having sucked the marrow from Pekin,

I planned with Allah that I should depart,

And having thus obtained a ruly wind

I shone like lightning through the schools of Hind.

"I shall say little of Hind. Its mouth is wide

With sacred texts and precepts packed in lyrics

For carriage, verse unversed in our empirics.

I grasped all Indian knowledge like a bride

Without a dower, enjoyed and let her go,

Giving God thanks that only Persians know."

The singing caravan shrank in a clear

Green sideless tunnel of the firmament.

Ali-el-Kerbelaï paused and watched

Intent, even as by torchlight men spear fish,

While searching flame-reflections brushed and lit

The deep brown-watered caverns of his eyes,

Where dim shapes moved profoundly in the pool.

His listeners watched the sage in ecstasy

Poise, concentrate his massive thought on Nothing,

Heard his narghilé bubble like a brain....

"From Hind to Misr. At Cairo's El-Azhar,

The flower of Moslem scholarship, I sat

Among the Sunni bastards. As a cat

Watches the sun through eyelids scarce ajar,

From dawn till evening prayer I laboured hard,

Lolling in ambush round the great courtyard

"To pounce on wingèd words. Athwart the arcade

Midday in golden bars came clanging down

Upon the anvil of each turbaned crown,

And many minds took refuge in my shade.

I was divinely hard to understand,

Talking until my throat was dry as sand.

"So to the mosque well—into it they pushed

A dog who disagreed with me—and drew

Relief what time the pigeons ceased to coo

Or rustle round its rainbow-juice. We hushed

Our flights of eloquence when my roghan

Sizzled complacent in the frying-pan.

"Mashallah, what a life! Yet in this scene

I found a fleck of rust upon my tongue.

Propelled by Fate and my own force of lung,

I flitted with two reverend Maghrebín

Whom I had favoured, having learned the trick

Of speaking their foul breed of Arabic.

"Immortal spirits led us, yea the chief

Afrit, the crown of all the Afarit.

We crossed the great Sahara like a street.

My fame allows me licence to be brief.

Enough. Whatever any sceptic says,

I still maintain I spent a year at Fez.

"Here was a sect that said one God was three.

I plied Moriscos who had tasted two

Beliefs perforce, I even asked a Jew

To make this strange Tariqah clear; but he—

By this judge Christians—he could not explain,

Although his father had been burnt in Spain.

"Ah, how I studied in that narrow city,

Whose walls are changeless as a Persian law,

And full of loopholes. To the seers I saw

Is due the gamut of my human pity.

We stirred the puddles of the human mind

Till none could see the bottom but the blind.

"Now Shaitan tempted me. I fell for once,

A venial sin.... I journeyed to Stamboul

To plumb the errors of the Greegi school.

'Twas there I read the Stagyrite, a dunce,

The Frankish ruler of theology,

And father of a dunce, Alfarabi.

"I laid him low and hurried home to indite

A book, the fruit of all my Thought and Travel,

Entitled 'Contemplation of the Navel,'

A mystic book. (But first I learned to write.)

Such of our doctors as can read have read it.

But I was bent on even higher credit.

"I sought a cave whence madmen hunt wild sheep,

And there for thirteen years I held my head,

Until the dupes decided I was dead.

Indeed I spent the better part in sleep,

Lest I should be beguiled from abstract chatter

By lust for this world's striped and dazzling matter.

"Night brought me counsel, and a pock-marked Kurd

Or angels brought me food. Day spared my dreams

That tilled the solitude like slow white teams

Of oxen, till it blossomed, and I heard

The Roc's huge pinions scour the starry cobbles;

And so I rose above all human squabbles.

"For me the burning haze made sandhills dance,

Till blushing shadows covered their nude breasts.

The eternal heirs of leisure were my guests,

And feasted on my glory in advance.

Then on an eve among the eves.... The End!

My soul sat by me talking as a friend.

"I bleached my beard, and came to Ispahan.

You know the rest. To Allah's will I bowed

In suffering the plaudits of the crowd,

For all must listen; those must preach who can.

I stirred the town with fingers raised to bless....

And gauged the people by my emptiness."

The caravan was gone. Its song survived

A little, faint, an echo, not at all.

Then like a magic carpet warmth was drawn

Back into heaven, and left behind a void

Where thin-faced breezes, huddling from the hills,

Sat down to breathe hard tales upon their hands.

And suddenly earth looked her age. Like her

The shapes round Ali-el-Kerbelaï shivered,

Pulling their coloured abbas to their ears

And drawing in their feet. At last one spoke:

"O master, you to whom the world is known,

What is your thought's conclusion, what the sum

Of added knowledge in the tome of You?"

And Ali answered weighing out his words:

"Sir, I have seen the East and West, great peace,

Great wars, indifferent fates that blessed or cursed

Their builders. I have touched the best and worst

In flesh and thought, have watched flames rise and cease,

Consoled high hopes, deep passions, men that die

For things beneath the earth, behind the sky,

"For god or woman. I have counted change

For the Sarraf of Changelessness, have marked

Kings, Wazirs, coursed by sons of dogs that barked

And bit, the uninhabitable range

Of power, where all that climb in others' shoes

Are honoured and unperched like cockatoos.

"Now having known mankind in hell and bliss

Through thrice a generation, I have formed

From all the problems I besieged or stormed

One firm conviction, only one! 'Tis this:

The Faith, the Pomp, the Loves, the Lives of men

Outshine the firefly and outcrest the wren."

He added as he rose: "But God is great."

And bent, repassing through the city gate,

Lest he should bump his venerable pate.

---

XVI
THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC

Beside the Sufis ran a whited wall.

Two cypress-trees peeped over from the waist,

Stiff, motionless as toys. Among their spires

A lithe voice mounted and leaned down again:

"Come, for to-night the hills are all white marble

Under a sapphire dome,

Where bats scrawl riddles which the bulbuls garble

For owls to answer. Come.

"The air is sick of moon-discoloured roses,

The plain stagnates like some

Weird archipelago of garden-closes

And dead, bleached waters. Come.

"O night of miracles! Come, let us wander

Over this ghostly sea

To that dark cypress-circled island yonder,

In whose clear centre we

"Will lie and float in phosphorescent ether.

Thank heaven that night is cool

As day was scorching. Let us watch together

The lovers in the pool.

"Look in! Lie still! A jewelled ripple spangles

The hand upon her hair;

While, lying listless on her back, she dangles

A finger in the air.

"How still he is. Your motionless perfection

Absorbs him utterly.

Doubtless you seem to him his love's reflection

Face downwards in the sky,

"Whence I am hanging, seeing only her face,

As he sees only yours.

Lean down! And they shall meet us at the surface.

O silent paramours

"We bring to you, by stealth, while men are sleeping,

A gift. Let your domain

Have it for ever in its steadfast keeping;

We shall not come again.

"We bring our shadows: just the fleeting semblance

Of human love. O might

Your waters hold them for us in remembrance

Of one short summer night!

"A wondrous night, when two reflections hovered,

Dreaming of love aloud

Here by the pool, until the moon was covered

By an impending cloud;

"And then they lost each other. Where but lately

The magic mirror shone,

A wider shadow, cruelly, sedately,

Passes ... and we are gone."

The Dreamer stayed: "Who speaks of passing here?

The river passes, passes to the sea,

Drawing in rills the voices of the earth

To make its voice that merges in the swell.

The river passes and the boatman's chant

Is swallowed up in distance and the night.

Or is it, friend, the boats alone that pass?

The river, as I sometimes think, remains.

Even so it is with lovers and with love.

Then sing us something wise where laughter lurks,

As underneath the desert, from the hills

Whence cometh help, the hidden water-course

Chuckles. Upon this thread your garden hangs.

Nay, never shake that cypress head! We need

Not only sun but cloud and tears to build

Laughter, the rainbow of the inner man."

But the voice answered, or the cypress sighed:

"I am the brain of Hitherto.

In darkness I revolve and flash.

Books are the fortune I ran through.

My painted pen-case, yellow hue

And yellow sash

"Were famed from Yezd to Yezdikhast.

I taught what space and learned what mud is.

My metaphysics were my past.

Alas, I left my lust till last

Of all my studies.

"I kept my mind so clear and keen

By grinding guesswork into saws,

You scarce could fit a meal between

The triumphs of my thought-machine,

Its puissant jaws.

"The process of my intellect,

Mazed by the clapping hands that fed it,

Rolled on. They, founding a new sect

On premises that I had wrecked,

Gave me the credit.

"And so I used my fame to part

Man from his planks to sink or swim;

I plumbed his shallows, drew the chart....

Illusions broke the blacksmith's heart.

I envied him

"Suddenly, and set out to moon

About this garden scholarwise.

One silver laugh, two silken shoon,

To fill my empty anderûn

With splendid lies

"I ask of shadows, battering

My bars, and wonder why I ache.

O You who made both cage and wing,

Let me redeem my toilsome spring

By one mistake."

In the parched road the Dreamer took his lute

And tossed these chords across the battlement:

"The myrtles of Damascus,

The willows of Gilan,

Have sent the breeze to ask us

If aught but sceptics can

Deny the spirit calling

To flesh—we are the call—

And save themselves from falling

Behind a whited wall.

"Most pure was Abu Bakr,

And Allah speeds the plough

That furrows young wiseacre

Across an open brow.

Most fair is self-possession—

Give me the open road—

But Solomon in session

Went mad and wrote an ode.

"All fields of thought are arid,

No earthly soil is rich,

By thirst of knowledge harried

And those ambitions which

The heart like Pharaoh's harden

To let no impulse go.

But every yard's a garden

Through which we mystics flow.

"I conjure hawthorn blossom

From Bakhtiari vales—

As when one looks across some

Choked channel where the sails

Of anchored vessels jostle—

I tune their rhythmic sway

In hollows where the throstle

Is only dumb by day.

"Red routs of rhododendron,

That slope to Trebizond,

Rapt round the garden's end run

To mask the waste beyond.

There facts are free to wonder

Down pathways like the streak

Of silver pavement under

The palms of Basra creek.

"In charity of jasmin

My poor designs are clad,

As nature cloaked the chasm in

The ramparts of Baghdad,

Where passed the fabled Caliph

With Giafar by night

To mystify the bailiff

At Garden-of-Delight.

"The orchard-grave of Omar,

Neglected Nishapur,

Where sprays of petaled foam are,

Sighs through my garden-door

With boughs round whose gnarled stem men

Had never thought to twine

Green tendrils from rich Yemen,

The sunburnt Smyrniot vine.

"Wild lilies, whose rich red owes

Its undertone to brown,

From Kurd-betented meadows

Break out in every town.

Blind alleys' bursts of lilac,

Where russet warblers woo,

Are set to cover my lack

Of vocal retinue.

"The myrtles of Damascus,

The poppies of Shiraz,

Have sent the breeze to ask us

If they are dumb, because

Wisdom and one that had her

To wife still hug the fence,

Where we have left a ladder

To rescue men from sense."

The cypress swayed. Hard by another voice

Climbed the twin tree, and thus its theme began:

"Young man, Shirín is out of date.

We have to thank the West

That Attar's latest is too late

To waken Interest,

And one of Love's great names, Majnûn,

Is now generic for a loon.

"Our crust is cooling, and the bent

For culture bears its fruit,

As we that weed out sentiment

Likewise outgrow the brute;

While Providence matures a blend

That pure philosophers commend

"In logic. Constancy declined

Because we pruned our morals.

Love practises the change of mind

That ethics preach in quarrels...."

There cried the Dreamer: "Who are you that mock

Exiles in search of that from which they came,

Intent to know themselves and so the Lord

Whose ways are as the number of men's souls?

By these we compass our escape from Self,

The mirage in the waste through which we pass

Across the bridge Phantasmal to the Real;

Until, forgetting Self, we see in All

The Loved that leads us to the eternal beauty

Shown in a thousand mirrors yet but one.

These are the Sufi tenets. What of you?"

From the first tree the quavering voice replied:

"It is my double, Peder Sag,

The summit of the civilized

Above such heats as woman or flag.

It is my double, Peder Sag,

Who bows the poet to the wag,

The hero to the undersized.

It is my double, Peder Sag,

The summit of the civilized.

"His mission is to educate

By atrophy, the cure for spasm,

And so to serve the future state.

His mission is to educate

A world of fellowships that hate

One living thing—enthusiasm.

His mission is to educate

By atrophy, the cure for spasm.

"He dresses us in faultless drab.

His colour-scheme for you is tan,

And, level as a marble slab,

He dresses us in faultless drab.

Him urchins call Abu Kilab:

The Father-of-the-Modern-Man.

He dresses us in faultless drab.

His colour-scheme for you is tan.

"My double did a deal for truth.

He teaches balance to the Young,

And knows a better thing than youth.

My double did a deal for truth,

His emblem is the wisdom tooth,

A flowery and fruitless tongue.

My double did a deal for truth.

He teaches balance to the Young."

Serdar-i-Jang impatient pulled his beard

And growling Tous his bridle: "Let him be

The fool I was, and so mine enemy

From whom I part in peace." Farid Bahadur

Shrugged that: "Our wares are not for such as these."

Once more the Brain: "I might have come with you,

Leaving my gloomy castle in the air,

For, overgrown with tangles, in its flank

Lies hid the thrice-veiled door of happiness;

Only—my double has mislaid the key."

Seyid Rida laughed and answered: "We have found it."

The Lover knocked: "'Tis I!"

The Loved One made reply:

"There is no room for two

Beyond the Gateway."

In solitude he learned

The Secret; so returned

Saying: "O Love, 'tis you."

And entered straightway.

A wicket opened gently of itself,

And so a sceptic joined the caravan.

---

XVII
THE PRIDE OF THE TAILOR

Oh, sliding down the desert from Shiraz

The tailor-man from Meshed tore his hose:

A crowning test, a broken man! "Ah, was

I born that fate might practise fancy-blows?

"The road is rougher than a magnate's mirth

Toward the humble, long as a bad debt.

I cannot dream of any woman worth

This cloth. To me 'twas dearer than a pet."

Then Dreamer-of-the-Age cried: "Bring me thread

Strong as the bridge as they call Pul-i-Katûn!

For Meshed's champion tailor-man is dead

Unless his wounded pride be succoured soon."

Launched on the seaward slope the pilgrims went

On to the gulf, and heard, athwart the dim

Night echoing, a sufferer's lament

And Dreamer-of-the-Age consoling him:

"The night fits down on the desert, brother;

We are drawn there-through like a piece of thread.

The steepened sky and the vastness smother

Uneasy sleep in her league-wide bed.

Rocked to and fro with a camel's burden

On broken tracks, that are thin as scars,

We near the Gulf. Have we seen our guerdon?"

"Yea, every night we have seen the stars."

"The dust is thick, and our own feet raise it.

Our eyes were clear did our feet but rest.

We give our heart and no sign repays it.

What need we ever a further test!

We drift along with the old dumb neighbour

In the old blind alley we call our goal,

Hope: all that comes of a soul's life-labour."

"It was the labour that made the soul."

"We stride ahead, but in every village

A brother faints and a weakness falls.

The tribes that till and the tribes that pillage

Are reconciled with the life that palls.

Oh, townsmen tread to a fixed thanksgiving,

But what of us, if these pitying throngs

Should ask the end of our harder living?"

"God knows the answer. They know our songs,

"The coloured patch on the background, Silence,

The gleaming thought that is Love's to wear

Undimmed through space to a myriad-while hence.

Could the hands be worthy that knew not care

To weave Love's garb? Though we needs must suffer,

Shall we sing the worse that we sing in vain?

Our songs shall rise as the road grows rougher.

In the breathless hills, in the fevered plain,

"They mount as sparks from the night's oases,

And fall far short of the idol's feet.

They are stored by God in his secret places,

The least-lit stars of his darkest street.

Yet ten worlds hence they shall dance, my brother,

To travelling winds.... If our songs were worth

One gleam of light to the Way of Another,

We bless the sorrow that gave them birth."

---

XVIII
THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURER

So to the journey's end. The Gulf was there

Steaming and soundless, and the weary feet

Were stayed at last from following the Queen.

The great dhow nosed the creek; slow water lapped

About her burnished; burnished in her sat

Unmoving bronze, her oarsmen. Then they rose:

"Hail, Bringers of the Queen!" "Hail, ship! you bear

What cargo hence?" "We carry on your charge."

"But leave us nothing—nothing in exchange?"

"Only the ancient story of a slave.

There lies a secret buried none too deep."

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

I dwelled beside the impulsive Rhone, a child that loved to be alone.

The forest was my nursery. My happiness was all my own.

I knew by name each cloud that lowers the sunshine through in liquid showers.

Deep in the tangled undergrowth I caught the singing of the flowers.

Our minstrels sang of rape and arson, all the joys of private wars.

The forest wall was calm and tall. My tutor laughed, and drank to Mars.

Bald, vulture-like upon its perch, our crag-born castle seemed to search

The gorge for prey, its shade to still the bells a-twitter in the church

Where, cheek by jowl with fearsome fowl and gargoyle, ghostly men, in foul

Incense that tried to stifle me, recited magic formulæ.

At home clanked metal psalm and spur; but, oh the woods ...! I tried to tame

A wolf-cub that the gardener called Life. He knew. The preacher came.

I see him yet, his visage wet with hot emotion, tears, and sweat.

Contorted in the market-place he shrieked that all must pay a debt

To one Jehovah and His Son, by bursting eastward as the Hun

Had scourged the West. In unison we all replied 'twere nobly done,

For he explained that heaven was gained more featly—wrenching Saint Jerome—

From Palestine than Christendom. That night no peasant durst go home.

His words were like a wind that fanned a grass-fire: God would lend His hand

To purge away the infidel whose breath profaned the Holy Land.

He showered indulgences, and kissed the brows of those who would enlist

To take a chance of martyrdom or give the devil's tail a twist.

He promised we should see the light, that cursèd Arabs could not fight,

Counted them dead since we were "led by General Jesus," said the pope.

Moreover we must win and use Christ, His true Cross, the Widow's cruse,

All talismans that found no scope for miracles among the Jews.

Upon the walls the veriest dolt and clown, arow like birds that moult,

Chattered with one accord—or some small priestly prompting:—"Diex el volt."

No wonder that our heartstrings glowed within us like a smelted lode

Whence Kobolds welded Durandal; and like one man we ran or rode

Forth. Were we not enchanted? This was first among God's certainties.

Even our steeds were like Shabdíz, the pride of King Khusraw Parvíz.

We saw our path made plain, the hills removed by faith, whose foaming course

Flooded the continents like flats. We saw the world made one—by force.

In ecstasy our spirits soared. With beatific face toward

My cloudland all the crowd shed tears, and vowed to serve and save the Lord.

But cloudland, seeming to disdain such warmth, replied with slapping rain.

Conjuring such black augury the monks recited formulæ.

Besides, lest women, priests and traders should tempt the appetite of raiders,

The Church proclaimed the Truce of God. Not all our barons were crusaders.

Those who were frightened not to go sold all they had to make a show,

Land, tool and ware to pay a fare. The panic made sly kings its heir.

So much was sold by young and old, by fond, ambitious, hot and cold,

That steel took sudden silver wings, then flew beyond the reach of gold.

In such a gust my tender age availed not with the preaching sage,

For I was born of fighting men; and one of them took me for page,

Though I was loth to go, and prayed for mercy and a little maid

Whose hair was shining sunflower brown. I thought of all the games we played

All day with hay and idle mowers. She dubbed me knight in pixy bowers,

Where in the hindering undergrowth I caught the singing of the flowers,

Ah me, how distant!... I was blest in my young lord who shared the test,

Being sent upon this pilgrimage, his snow-white love still unpossessed.

He, too, was paler than a ghost, as though already all were lost.

She dreamed of empery for him. He taught me this to show the cost:

My heart was mine.

Ambition kept it whole.

I gained the world,

And so I lost my soul.

Then you were mine,

But only mine in part.

You loved the world,

And so I lost my heart.

Only my tutor lay abed, calling us savages, and read

His pagan books. The fever would abate, he sneered, when we were bled.

He chilled me. His head was like a block of ice, so clear. He tried to shock

Me with his whispered flings that saints and monarchs came of laughing-stock,

Or boasted some loud organ, Reason, which doctors had confused with treason,

Looked round lest walls should hear, then wept that he was one born out of season.

Our preaching-man pronounced a ban upon him, cried good riddance: he

Was like to lead young men astray because he knew geography,

(And sciences, as medicine, reduce the value of a shrine).

My tutor passed for riding gnomes through space upon a pack of tomes.

But at the water-parting I waved to the castle green and dun,

A tapestry where liquid sun—or tears—had made the colours run.

I looked my last on every stone and tree to whom my face was known.

The warriors smiled and called me child. They had not understood the Rhone,

Nor that I loved the birchwood's skin, the pansy's face, the sheep-dog's grin,

That sleep with Nature in a field was sweet to me as mortal sin.

For love so fierce I stole: I gave my summer holidays to save

Lambs from the butcher, built for them sanctuary at my wolf-cub's grave.

I stroked the landscape like a lute. No scentless words, no colours mute,

Could paint its music. Henceforth I had only heaven for substitute.

Sling, crossbow, bludgeon, axe and spud, cilice and vials of sacred blood,

On such equipment we relied. Our foes were misery and mud.

Each Norman keep, each Frankish hold, each corner of the Christian fold

Sent forth its sheep to sound of bells. Our prophets might have had them tolled.

Prince, abbot, squire, felt the desire of bliss that swept stews, taverns, farms.

Soft damosels ploughed through the mire with babe at breast and men-at-arms;

And, since this journey was the price of entrance into Paradise,

The gaols belched out their criminals and beggars all alive with lice.

We took no food, for God is good; besides we heard that convents strewed

Converted Hungary for us. We never dared mistrust His mood.

Heading the mass far up the pass, that led us straight to Calvary,

The preaching-man upon an ass recited magic formulæ.

Soon we were joined by northern lords; no few among their folk had swords.

(Walter the Pennyless his rout had gone before and died in hordes,

While Gotschalk's dupes, with geese and goats upon their flags, had found the boats

To pass beyond the Bosphorus, where Kilidj Arslan cut their throats.)

Our force could not await the Turk, but in its ardour got to work

That was not mentioned in the breves. It murdered all the Jews in Treves.

And I was sad a Christian lad should march with myrmidons so mad.

They made our Holy War appear too near a Musulman Jehad.

We plodded on for many weeks through mazes where the Austrian ekes

A bare existence on the slips of alp below the granite peaks,

And all those weeks did naught betide us palmers save that many died.

Our gaol-birds eyed the preaching-man, and scholars spoke of vaticide;

But I was happy when our stout commander sent me on to scout.

I cried for little Sunflower-tress, and made strange faces at the trout.

Because I was a fighting-man I trained myself to nettle-stings,

And copied oaths and made up things my tutor would have tried to scan:

Briar and bramble,

Don't be so dense.

You scratch and you scramble

Like things without sense.

Why grudge me a ramble?

You can't want my hose,

White-coated bramble,

Pink briar-rose.

Bramble and briar,

Leave me alone.

Cling to the friar,

Make him your own.

Kiss him, the liar

Who brought us all here,

Gentle sweet-briar,

Bramble my dear.

Thus through the months of slapping rain we plunged into the Hungarian plain,

And paid its mounted bowmen dear for wretched stocks of fruit and grain,

Or shelter in a reed-built town. They asked for hostages. We gave

Our leaders to these dirty-brown mongrels, who brought us to the Save

With loss. My tutor's Damocles perhaps had lived in times like these;

For whoso straggled from the main body was never seen again.

Ere this my rhyme had spread, and swelled into a marching-song. I blushed

To witness how the spearmen held their sides with laughter, as they yelled

"Bramble and briar." 'Twas the first faint mutiny. These men of Gaul

Bantered the sterner pilgrims so I wondered why they came at all.

Yea, often now that I am old and hear how zealous scribes have told

The zeal that made the first crusade, well—history is eaten cold.

My lord could think of nothing but the lady who had bidden him cut

His way to her by such detours. Aye, this was true romance—the slut.

We called her secretly The Burr—whereof was plenty in our beds—

For night by night he crooned of her, nor even named the Sepulchre:

I waited, and the hours were loth to close.

They scarcely stirred till evening leapt to sight

Between the shadows that all substance throws

As bridges for its passage to the night.

You never came. Life dozes at the touch

Of those not wholly resolute to live,

Who let themselves mistrust her overmuch

To take the only thing she has to give.

Amid the rags there caracoled fop-penitents whose panders lolled

With human baggage in the rear, and hound and hawk. So chaos rolled

Adown the Danube rolling east. Beyond Semlin the pinewoods filled

With Celt and Saxon, man and beast inspired to leave the west untilled.

The locust-swarms were better drilled than we, the owls were not so blind.

At every stage we left behind poor simpletons that moaned and shrilled,

Thinking each swamp Gethsemane. It seemed that at their agony

The doctors scoffed with cross aloft, reciting magic formulæ.

Alone the princes lightly pranced, as if the pilgrimage enhanced

Their right to weigh upon the world thereafter. So the doom advanced

To dervish cries and jester's japes. Hermit and boor and jackanapes,

I and my ghost-pale master threw a trail of shadows, motley shapes,

Where Rhodopé's wine-purples mix snow with the moonlight. Oh, 'twas gall

Amid the horror of it all that Bulgars thought us lunatics,

Or worse; for ever at our flank a stream, that in my nostrils stank,

Seethed; and amid the best of her the scum of Europe wenched and drank.

At last we halted where Constantinople's grandeur puts to scorn

The villaged west, and challenges the Orient on her Golden Horn.

Ah, brazen, were your heart as strong as looked your square-chinned ramparts.... Long

We waited at the gates in dust knee-deep. The Emperor did not trust

The help that he had craved. He swore he had not asked so many ... more

Would ruin him.... He let the heat suck out our strength at every pore.

But we were told great noblemen, Godfrey of Bouillon in Ardennes,

Robert of Flanders, "Sword and Lance of Christians," all the flower of France

Were on our side, Hugh Vermandois, Stephen of Chartres and Troyes and Blois,

Baldwin and Raymond of Toulouse. The preacher said we could not lose.

Moreover he had spoken with angel-reserves behind us, sith

They sent assurance (Saracens we mocked, but had our own Hadith)

That we should root the heathen out, and blight as with a ten years' drought

Their fields. Jehovah willed that we should leave no seed of theirs to sprout.

Our mates streamed in from lands beyond the Adriatic, Bohemond

With Tancred; strait Dalmatian bays, Epirus, Scodra, devious ways

Bore them with boastful tales of sport and plunder, and a vague report

That this was nothing to the spoil that beckoned from the Moslem court.

Henceforth impatient ups and downs possessed us. Asiatic towns

Flamed to the general vision. We heard less perhaps of heavenly crowns

Than flowers and peacocks made of gems, the Caliph's crusted diadems

That crushed the head like Guthlac's bell, and trees with solid emerald stems.

And I confess Christ counted less to us than tales of leash and gess,

Or Hárún-el-Rashíd's largesse that sent the clock to Charlemagne.

We practised sums, and tried to train our cavalry in loss and gain.

Upon the misty wizard-world rose like a star the money-brain.

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 Adhémar of Puy recited magic formulæ

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 Dorylæum. 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 Amírs.

Alternate famine and carouse brought plague; but doubtless God allows

Expensive trials of faith that we might learn the magic formulæ.

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 trouvère-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 Adhémar 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 formulæ.

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 blessèd 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 οἱ πολλοὶ [Greek: 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 formulæ 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 formulæ;

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 formulæ. 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 wingèd 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 burnûs-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

---