HARPS HUNG UP IN BABYLON
By Arthur Colton
New York: Henry Holt And Company
1907
DEDICATED TO
MY FATHER
The harps hung up in Babylon,
Their loosened strings rang on, sang on
And cast their murmurs forth upon
The roll and roar of Babylon:
"Forget me, Lord, if I forget
Jerusalem for Babylon,
If I forget the vision set
High as the head of Lebanon
Is lifted over Syria yet,
If I forget and bow me down
To brutish gods of Babylon."
Two rivers to each other run
In the very midst of Babylon,
And swifter than their current fleets
The restless river of the streets
Of Babylon, of Babylon,
And Babylon's towers smite the sky,
But higher reeks to God most high
The smoke of her iniquity:
"But oh, betwixt the green and blue
To walk the hills that once we knew
When you were pure and I was true,"
So rang the harps in Babylon—
"Or ere along the roads of stone
Had led us captive one by one
The subtle gods of Babylon. "
The harps hung up in Babylon
Hung silent till the prophet dawn,
When Judah's feet the highway burned
Back to the holy hills returned,
And shook their dust on Babylon.
In Zion's halls the wild harps rang,
To Zion's walls their smitten clang,
And lo! of Babylon they sang,
They only sang of Babylon:
"Jehovah, round whose throne of awe
The vassal stars their orbits draw
Within the circle of Thy law,
Canst Thou make nothing what is done,
Or cause Thy servant to be one
That has not been in Babylon,
That has not known the power and pain
Of life poured out like driven rain?
I will go down and find again
My soul that's lost in Babylon."
CONTENTS
[ THE SHEPHERD AND THE KNIGHT ]
[ VERSES FROM "THE CANTICLE OF THE ROAD" ]
[ WHEN ALL THE BROOKS HAVE RUN AWAY ]
[ WHO MAY WITH THE SHREWD HOURS STRIVE? ]
[ LET ME NO MORE A MENDICANT ]
[ CONCERNING TABITHA'S DANCING OF THE MINUET ]
[ EPILOGUE TO A BOOK OF UNIMPORTANT VERSES ]
WEST-EASTERLY MORALITIES
THE CAPTIVE
There was a king, returned from putting down
The stiff rebellion of an Afghan town,
Who marked for death a captive. Then arose
The ragged Afghan from the marble floor,
Nor longer to the king's feet weeping clung,
But in the babble of his foreign tongue
He cursed him, as that ancient saying goes:
"Who comes to wash himself in death, before
Entering the pool, empties his heart ashore."
"What mean these words?" The king's voice, cold
and loud,
Rang in the space above the frightened crowd,
That bent before it, as when storm-winds blow
Their warning horns, and the storm crouches low
Still on the solid hills with sombre eyes,
Long lightnings slant, and muffled thunders rise,
And startled forests, helpless to retreat,
Stand with their struggling arms and buried feet.
An aged vizier rose, and bowed his head,
Clasping his gentle withered hands: "He said:
'To two God gives the shelter of His cloak,
Him who keeps down the anger in his breast,
Him who in justice counteth mercy best;
God shelter me and thee.' The man so spoke."
And the king bade them set the Afghan free,
Who in the face of death spoke graciously.
Ben Ali, the young vizier, to his feet
Leaped: "As I hold by counsellors it is meet
Truth should be spoken at a king's demand,
This man reviled thee with a shameful word!"
Whereat the king was mute, as one who heard
A voice in his own breast; turned with his hand
The bracelets on his arm; then speaking low,
Once more he bade them let the Afghan go.
THE KING.
"Art thou so upright, and by God made free
To be malignant in integrity?
Is it the truth alone thou owest to the king?
Nay, but all oracles that whispering
Speak in the central chamber of the heart,
Saving when envy speaks, which spoke in thee.
But thou, my father, shall not thy name be
Henceforth 'The Merciful'? For so thou art.
So spoke the king, and, leaning head to head,
The courtiers whispered, and Ben Ali said:
BEN ALI.
"Is it not written: 'When the truth is known,
Then only the king's mercy is his own'?
If then the king his servant will forgive
For rendering back the king's prerogative,
Forgive the misshaped mouth ill made to lie,
Forgive the straitened walk, the single eye,
Forgive the holy dead for truth who died,
And those who thought their deaths were sanctified;
With such forgiveness let me then go hence,
And, in some desert place of penitence
And meditation, read it in the dust,
If He who sends His rain upon the just,
And sends His rain upon the unjust too,
Is mercifully false, or merely true."
THE KING.
And the king said: "Thou livest! And thy words
Are more for peril than a thousand swords!
Is it king's custom to bear two men's scorn
In the short compass of a single morn?
Go to thine house and wait until thou know
The king's hand follows when his voice says, Go."
Ben Ali from the court went forth in shame,
And after him the shivering Afghan came,
Whom, taking by the garment, he led down
Through the packed highways of the busy town,
To where in flowers and shadows, peace and pride,
His gardened palace by the river side
Lay like a lotus in perfumed repose;
There set a feast for him as for the king,
With friendly words and courteous welcoming
Sat with the ragged Afghan, while beneath
The dancing girls, each with her jasmine wreath,—
And one that dallied with a crimson rose,—
Sang softly in the garden cool, that sank.
By lawn and terrace to the river's bank:
"So dear thou art,
The seed that thou hast planted in the mould
And fertile fallow of my heart
Hath borne a thousand-fold,
So dear thou art.
"Sweet love, wild love,
Love will I sow and love will reap,
And where the golden harvest bends above
There will I find sleep,
Sweet love, child love."
And when the feast was over, and remained
Only the fruits, and wine in flasks contained,
And costly drinking cups, Ben Ali rose
And left the chattering Afghan with a smile,
To walk among his aloe trees awhile,
Thinking: "Day closes. Ere another close
These things I see no more, for a king's wrath
Leaps foaming down and falls, as cataracts leap
And fall from sleeping pools to pools asleep,
And either ere to-morrow night I die,
Or all my days in exiled penury
Among strange peoples tread the strangers' path."
And while in shadows with slow pace he went
The ruddy daylight faded in the west,
And she that held the rose against her breast
Sang to the stirring of some instrument:
"The sea
That rounds in gloom
The pallid pearl,
Where corals curl
The rosy edges of their barren bloom,
And cold seamaidens wear
Inwoven in their hair
A light that draws the sailor down the wet ways of
despair,
In whose green silken glisten
They drift and wait and listen,
And the sea-monsters lift their heads and stare!
The sorrowing sea,
Like life in me,
Wavers in homeless dreams till love is known
And love for life atone."
Meanwhile the Afghan, glancing here and there,
Saw no one by him, and arose in haste,
And took the drinking cups with jewels graced,
And hid them in his rags, from stair to stair
Slid like a shadow, and from hall to hall;
So vanished, like a shadow from the wall.
Ben Ali from his aloe-planted lawn
Returned, and saw the drinking cups were gone,
And smiled and leaned him in the window dim
To watch the dancing girls, who, seeing him
Began again to weave, to part, to close,
With tinkling bells and shimmer of white feet,
And she that drooped her head above a rose
Sang in the twilight, languid, slow, and sweet:
"Close-curtained rose,
Open thy petals and the dew disclose.
Hide not so long
Those crimson shades among,
In silken splendour
That nestling tender,
That dewdrop cradled in the heart of thee,
God meant for me.
"A little while,
And naught to me the blossom of thy smile.
Forgive all men;
Yea, love, forgive the false and trust again,
For life deceiveth,
And love believeth;
Within love's merciful chambers let us stay,
The while we may."
The singing ceased. There rose a storm of calls
And sudden clangour in his outer halls;
And these were hushed, and some one cried: "The
king!"
Followed the tread of armed men entering.
Ben Ali rose, thinking, "My time was brief;"
And lo, not only the tall king stood there,
His bracelets glittering in the torches' glare,
And gloomy eyes beneath his sweeping hair,
But at his feet cringed the swart Afghan thief.
"Thus saith the law: 'The thief shall have his hands
Struck from his wrists, in payment of the wage
Belonging to his sin.' The king commands
THE KING.
That thou, Ben Ali, wisdom's flower in youth,
Mirror of righteousness and well of truth,
Critic of kings, rebuker of old age,
Shalt judge this Afghan dog as the law stands."
Ben Ali stood with folded arms, and face
Bent down in meditation for a space.
BEN ALI.
"It is good law, O King. But is it not
Good law that, 'He who stealeth to devote
To some religious purpose and intent
Is held exempted from that punishment'?"
THE KING.
"It is good law. But the law holds 'Unproved
The finer motive which the thief hath moved
Unless the pious dedication be
Sequent immediate to the thievery.'"
BEN ALI.
"It is good law, O King, and good to heed.
Now, of 'religious purposes' it calls
First, 'to relieve the needy of their need.'
Can it be doubted that this Afghan falls
Among the 'needy,' and became a thief
To his own need's immediate relief?
Nay, in the very act of thieving vowed