Then there met him, face to face,
Seven odalisques of Heaven,
Swinging in a silver space
Flaming censers: and the seven,
Crowned with stars of burning green,
Seemed to turn to incense; seen,
As it rose, to be a driven
Hippogrif, or rosmarine.
Aloes, Nard, and Ambergris,
Sandal, Frankincense, and Civet,—
Genii of the fragrances,—
Rein each winged aroma; give it
Spurs and race it down the lull
Of the caverns, clouded dull
With wild manes of musk; now vivid,
Vaporous white and wonderful.
And Benreddin’s aching soul,
In each sense intoxicated,
Reached, at last, what seemed the goal
Of all passion: golden-gated,
Vast, a fountain: where he saw
Limbs of light without a flaw;
Breasts and arms of bloom; that waited
For his soul to nearer draw.
Houri faces shimmered there;
Fluid forms.—It, with a thunder
Of wild music, like the hair
Of a genie, flamed from under
Caverns of the demon-world:
Filled with voices, high it hurled,
Calling him, with beckoning wonder
Of cœrulean forms that swirled.
And with burning lips and eyes
In he plunged: hoarse laughter greeted,
Demon laughter: then sad sighs,
Dying downward: passion-heated
Hands seemed drawing him away,
Downward: where a rocking ray
Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted
Shadows wandered ghostly gray.
. . . . . . . . . .
And, ’tis said, that he was young,
Young that morning. When the darting,
Anguish-throated bulbuls sung,
In the silent starlight starting,
One, a Baghdad merchant, led
By the hoarness of its head,
Found what seemed a mummy: parting
Hair from brow, Benreddin—dead.
THE SALAMANDER
(Love Dæmonic)
“The Fire-Philosophers, and the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, taught that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved out of fire, and finally resolvable into it: and that fire was the last and the only-to-be known God: as that all things were capable of being searched down into it, and all things were capable of being thought up into it.”—The Rosicrucians.
Once she breathed upon my eyes,
Touched the soul that dreamed within me;
All the magic that might win me
Whispered to my heart with sighs—
Darkness can not make them lies!...
Bring me moly, hellebore!
Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe,
For my spirit’s dread Amenti,
For the curse that comes once more
With unutterable lore!