"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,