Part 1

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

_FICTION_

THE GATES JOHN STUART

_VERSE_

SONGS AND SATIRES

_THEATRE_

LES PARIAHS THE CAP AND BELLS PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES CLASS

_THEATRE IN VERSE_

FOOLERY DUSK

THE SINGING CARAVAN

_RECENT POETRY_

THE HEART OF PEACE By LAURENCE HOUSMAN. 5s. net

ESCAPE AND FANTASY By GEORGE ROSTREVOR. 3s. 6d. net

THE SAILING SHIPS By ENID BAGNOLD. 5s. net

COUNTER-ATTACK By SIEGFRIED SASSOON. 2s. 6d. net

POEMS By GEOFFREY DEARMER. 2s. 6d. net

THE SINGING CARAVAN

A SUFI TALE

BY

ROBERT VANSITTART

Each man is many as a caravan; His straggling selves collect in tales like these. Only the love of one can make him one. Who takes the Sufi Way--the Way of Peace?

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 1919

_Printed in Great Britain_

_IN MEMORIAM_

MY BROTHER ARNOLD

2ND LIEUTENANT, 11TH HUSSARS KILLED IN ACTION NEAR YPRES MAY 1915

_In twenty years of lands and seas and cities I had small joy and sought for it the more, Thinking: "If ever I am polymêtis, 'Tis yours to draw upon the hard-won store."_

_I had some bouts from Samarkand to Paris, And took some falls 'twixt Sweden and Sudan. If I was slow and patient learning parries, I hoped to teach you when you were a man._

_I cannot fall to whining round the threshold Where Death awaited you. I lack the skill Of hands for ever working out a fresh hold On life. In mystic ways I serve you still._

_The age of miracles is not yet ended. As on the humble feast of Galilee Surely a touch of heaven has descended On the cheap earthen vessel, even on me,_

_Whose weak content--the soul I travail under-- Unstable as water, to myself untrue, God's mercy makes an everlasting wonder, Stronger than life or death, my love of you._

I am indebted to Mr. Arthur Humphreys, Mr. John Murray, and the Editor of the _Spectator_ for kind permission to reproduce a few of the shorter poems in this tale of Persian mystics. I have included them, firstly, because I wished otherwise new work, being a memorial, to include such fragments of the past as might be worth preserving; secondly, because decreasing leisure inspires a diffidence in the future that may justify me in asking a reader or a friend to judge or remember me only by "Foolery" and "The Singing Caravan."

R. V.

CONTENTS

PAGE

IN MEMORIAM vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii

PRELUDE 1

I. THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN 9

II. THE JOY OF THE WORDS 15

III. THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT 17

IV. THE INWARDNESS OF THE MERCHANT 20

V. THE LESSON OF THE CAMEL 22

VI. THE BOASTING OF YOUTH 28

VII. THE HEART OF THE SLAVE 33

VIII. THE TALE OF THE CHEAPJACK 37

IX. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DOOR 39

X. THE SONG OF THE SELVES 49

XI. THE STORY OF THE SUTLER 57

XII. THE LEGEND OF THE PEASANT 62

XIII. THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER 66

XIV. THE MORAL OF THE SCHOLAR 78

XV. THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH 81

XVI. THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC 90

XVII. THE PRIDE OF THE TAILOR 100

XVIII. THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURER 103

XIX. FUSION 161

XX. LONG LEAVE 167

EPILOGUE 169

PRELUDE

The sun smote Elburz like a gong. Slow down the mountain's molten face Zigzagged the caravan of song. Time was its slave and went its pace.

It bore a white Transcaspian Queen Whose barque had touched at Enzelí. Splendid in jewelled palanquin She cleft Iran from sea to sea,

Bound for the Persian Gulf of Pearls, Where demons sail for drifting isles With bodyguards of dancing girls And four tamed winds for music, smiles

For passports. Thus the caravan, Singing from chief to _charvadar_, Reached the great gate of screened Tehran. The burrows of the dim bazaar

Swarmed thick to see the vision pass On broidered camels like a fleet Of swaying silence. One there was Who joined the strangers in the street.

They called him Dreamer-of-the-Age, The least of Allah's _Muslimeen_ Who knew the joys of pilgrimage And wore the sign of sacred green,

A poet, poor and wistful-eyed. Him all the beauty and the song Drew by swift magic to her side, And in a trance he went along

Past friends who questioned of his goal: "The Brazen Cliffs? The Realms of Musk? Goes he to Mecca for his soul?..." The town-light dwindled in the dusk

Behind. Ahead Misr? El Katíf? The moon far up a brine-green sky Made Demavend a huge pale reef Set in an ocean long gone dry.

Bleached mosques like dwarf cave-stalagmites, Smooth silver-bouldered _biyaban_ And sevenfold velvet of white nights Vied with the singing caravan

To make her pathway plain. Then one Beside the poet murmured low: "I plod behind, sun after sun, O master, whither do we go?

"Are we for some palmed port of Fars, Or tombed Kerbela, or Baghdad The Town-of-Knowledge-of-the-Stars? Is worship wise or are we mad?"

Answered the poet: "Do we ask Allah to buy each Friday's throng? None to whom worship is a task Should join the caravan of song.

"With heart and eyes unquestioning, friend, We follow love from sea to sea, And Love and Prayer have common end: 'May God be merciful to me!'"

So fared they, camped from noon to even, Till dawn, quick-groping through the gloom, Pounced on gilt planets low in heaven. Thus they beheld the domes of Kum.

And onward nightly. Though the dust Swirled in dread shapes of desert _Jinn_, Ever the footsore poet's trust Soared to the jewelled palanquin,

Parched, but still singing: "God, being great, Lent me a star from sea to sea, The drop in his hand-hollow, Fate. He holds it high, and signs to me

"Although She--She may not ..." "For thirst My songs and dreams like mirage fail. Yea, mad "--his fellow pilgrim cursed-- "I was. The Queen lifts not her veil."

"Put no conditions to her glance, O happy desert, where the guide Is Love's own self, Life's only chance ..." He saw not where the other died,

But pressed on strongly, loth to halt At Persia's pride, Rose-Ispahan, Whose hawks are bathed in pure cobalt. To meet the singing caravan

Came henna-bearded prince and sage With henna-fingered _houris_, who Strove to retard the pilgrimage, Saying: "Our streets are fair and you

"A poet. Sing of us instead. God may be good, but life is short. Yon are the mountains of the dead. Here are clean robes to wear at court."

He said: "I seek a bliss beyond The range of your _muezzin_-call. Do birds cease song till heaven respond? The road is naught. The Hope is all."

"You know not this Transcaspian Queen, Or what the journey's end may be. Fool among Allah's _Muslimeen_, You chase a myth from sea to sea."

"Because I bargain not nor guess If Waste or Garden wait for me, Love gives me inner loveliness. I hold to her from sea to sea."

So he was gone, nor seemed to care For beckoning shade, or boasting brook, Or human alabaster-ware Flaunted before him in the _suk_,

Nor paused at sunburnt far Shiraz, The home of sinful yellow wine, Where morning mists, like violet gauze, Deck the bare hills, and blossoms twine

In seething coloured foam around The lighthouse minarets. And sheer-- A thin cascade bereft of sound-- The track falls down to dank Bushír.

The caravan slipped to the plain. Its song rose through the rising damp, Till, through the grey stockade of rain, The Gulf of Pearls shone like a lamp.

Here waiting rode a giant _dhow_, Each hand a captive _Roumi_ lord, Who rose despite his chains to bow As straight her beauty went aboard,

Sailed. For the Tableland of Rhyme? The Crystal Archipelago? Who knows! This happened on a time Among the times of long ago.

He only, Dreamer-of-the-Age, Was left alone upon the sands, The goal of his long pilgrimage, The soil of all the promised lands,

Watching the _dhow_ cut like a sword The leaden waves. Yet, ere she sailed, God poured on broken eyes reward Out of Heaven's heart. The Queen unveiled.

There for a space fulfilment shone, While worship had his soul for priest And altar. Then the light was gone, And on the sea the singing ceased.

* * * * *

And is this all my story? Yes, Save that the _Sufi's_ dream is true. Dearest, in its deep lowliness This tale is told of me and you.

O love of mine, while I have breath, Whatever my last fate shall be, I seek you, you alone, till death With all my life--from sea to sea. And God be merciful to me.

I

THE VIEW OF THE WATCHMEN

The pilgrims from the north Beat on the southern gate All eager to set forth, In little mood to wait While watchman Abdelal Expounded the Koran To that wise seneschal, His mate, Ghaffír Sultan.

At length Ghaffír: "Enough!" Even watchmen's heads may nod. "Asräil is not rough If we have faith in God." His fellow tapped the book: The _Darawish_ discuss The point you overlook: Has Allah faith in us?

Know, then, that Allah, fresh And splendid as a boy Who thinks no ill of flesh, Had one desire: a toy. And so he took for site To build his perfect plan The Earth, where His delight Was manufactured: Man.

Ah, had we ever seen The draft, our Maker's spit, I think we must have been Drawn to live up to it. God was so pure and kind He showed Shaitan the lease Of earth that He had signed For us, His masterpiece.

The pilgrims cried: "You flout Our calm. Beware. It flags. Unbar and let us out, Sons of a thousand rags." And Abdelal said: "Hark! Methought I heard a din." Said Ghaffír: "After dark I let no devils in.

"Proceed." He sucked his pipe: God in His happiest mood Laid down our prototype, And saw that man was good. Aglow with generous pride: "Shaitan the son of Jann, This is my crown," He cried. "Bow down and worship man."

Said Evil with a smirk-- He was too sly to hiss-- "I cannot praise your work. I could have bettered this." God said: "I could have sown The soil my puppet delves, Yet rather gave my own Power to perfect themselves."

Still the fiend stiffened. "I Bow not." Our prophet saith That he would not comply Because he had no faith In us. He only saw The worst of Allah's toy, The springs, some surface flaw, The strengthening alloy.

Said God: "The faults are mine. I gave him hope and doubt, The mind that my design Shall have to work Me out. What though he fall! Is love So faint that I should grieve? How else, friend, should I prove To him that I believe?

"And how else should he rise? Lo, I, that made the night, Have given his conscience eyes Therein to find the Right. I have stretched out his hand, Oh, not to grasp but feel, Have taught his aims to land, But tipped the aims with steel;

"Have given him iron resolve And one great master-key, Courage, to bid revolve The hinge of destiny, And beams from heaven to build The road to Otherwise, With broken gloom to gild The causeway of his sighs

"Whereby I watch him come At last to judge of Me, Beyond the thunder's drum, The cymbals of the sea. Aye, Shaitan, plumb the Space And Time that planets buoy, And you shall know the place Appointed for my toy.

"I could not give him rest, And see him satiate At once, or make the zest Of life an opiate. I might have been his lord, I had not been his friend To sheathe his spirit's sword And start him at the end.

"I would not make him old, That he might see his port Fling its nocturne of gold And cheerfulness athwart The dusk. I planned the wave, And wealth of wind and star. Could one be gay and brave Who never saw afar

"The cause that he outlives Only because he fought, The peaks to which he strives, The ranges of his thought, Until the dawn to be Relieve his watchfires dim, Not by his faith in Me But by my faith in him!

"I also have my dreams, And through my darkest cloud His climbing phalanx gleams To my salute, and, proud Of him even in defeat, My light upon his brow, My roughness at his feet, I triumph. Shaitan, bow!"

But Shaitan like an ass Jibbed and would not give ear. Just so it came to pass, Declares our Book, Ghaffír. We know that in the heat Of disputation--well, Allah shot out his feet, And Shaitan went to hell.

Thus Abdelal. The gate Shook to the pilgrims' cry: "When will you cease to prate, Beards of calamity!" The poet: "Allah's bliss Fall on his watchmen! Thus Our journey's password is That God has faith in us."

II

THE JOY OF THE WORDS

The Sufis trembled: "Open, open wide, Dismiss us to illuminate the East." Old Ghaffír fumbled the reluctant bolts, Lifting his hands and eyes as for a feast. And this was their viaticum. His words Were mingled with their eagerness like yeast:

Go forth, poor words! If truly you are free, Simple, direct, you shall be winged like birds, Voiced like the sea.

Walk humbly clad! Be sure those words are lame That ride a-clatter, or that deck and pad A puny frame.

As in your dress, So in your speech be plain! Be not deceived; the Mighty Meaningless Are loud in vain.

Be not puffed up, Nor drunk with your own sound! Shall men drink deeply when an empty cup Is handed round?

Shout not at heaven! Say what I bade you say. Simplicity is beauty dwelling even In yea or nay.

Be this your goal. Beauty within man's reach Is poetry. You cannot touch man's soul Save with man's speech.

Therefore go straight. You shall not turn aside To vain display; for yonder lies the gate Where gods abide

Your coming. Go! The way was never hard. What would you more than common flowers or snow? For your reward,

Be understood, And thus shall you be sung. Aye, you who think to show us any good, Speak in our tongue.

III

THE DEPTH OF THE NIGHT

The watchman finished, as the southern gate Clanged, and the breathless city lay behind. The Dreamer's shadows shrank against the wall, As though the desert called and none replied, Till the young pilot, standing out to night, Swung clear these lines to sound the depths of her:

"Blue Persian night, Soft, voiceless as the summer sea! Flooding the bouldered desert sand, submerge This cypressed isle And Demavend's snow-spire--a sunken rock On your hushed floor, where I the diver stand Beyond the reach of day. And though, up through your overwhelming peace, I see your surface, heaven, I would not rise there, being drowned in you, Blue Persian night.

"Blue Persian night, O consolation of the East! In your clear breathless oceanic sheen My heart's an isle, From whose innumerable caves and coigns-- When dusk awakes the city of my mind-- Exploring boats set forth, Bound for the harbour-lights of God knows where, Full, full of God knows what; It must be love of Him, or Her, or You, Blue Persian night."

Her signal answered; for a slender wand Of moonbeam touched the Dreamer on the mouth. The caravan looked upward with a shout And set its camels rolling to the south, Murmuring: "Blue Persian night, none ever saw You through your own sheer purity before us. Rise up our songs as bubbles from the sand ..." Somewhere among the camels rose this chorus:

Dong! Dong! Lurching along Out of the dusk Into the night. Noiseless and lusty, Dreamy and dusty, Looms the long caravan-line into sight.

Dong! Dong! Never a song, Never a footfall A breath or a sigh. Ghostly and stolid, Stately and squalid, Creeps the monotonous caravan by.

Dong! Dong! Fugitive throng. Out of the dark Into the night, Silent and lonely, Gone!... the bells only Tells us a caravan once was in sight.

IV

THE INWARDNESS OF THE MERCHANT

Moussa, the son of the Crypto-Jew, Had eaten his fill of yellow stew

And a bit besides (as a business man He was far too quick for the caravan,

Who loved him not, though it feared his guile). Moussa then: "I shall walk awhile

"To ease my soul of its heavy load." His pious friends: "May you find a road,"

And winked. "His soul has begun to feel There's nothing left but a march to steal."

But one from the village, decoying quail For the governor's pot, came back with a tale

Of a lean arm shaken against the sky Like a stunted thorn, and this piteous cry:

"As sound within an ice-bound desert mewed Drags out existence at the very core Of isolation, as breakers slip ashore In vainly eternal whispers to the nude Reef-coral, where no human feet intrude Upon the purity of stillness; or As, far from life, unmated eagles soar Above the hilltops' breathless solitude,

"So moves my love, like these a thing apart, Fierce, in the ruined temple of my heart, Shy as a shooting star that peers new-risen Mid strangers. Even so. Pent in the prison Of space my soul, a lonely planet, wheels ... Men call the sum of loneliness 'Ideals.'"

This is the plaint that the cross-road heard Where it strikes from Kashan to Burujird.

The townsmen, met by the sun-dried stream, Caught a voice high up like an angel's scream

Or a teaspoon tapping the bowl of heaven, And they cried: "_Ajab!_ May we be forgiven,

"But it sounds a soul of the rarer sort Whose wings are set for no earthly port."

And the answer came, as they cried: "Who's that?" "One that sells short weight in mutton fat."

V

THE LESSON OF THE CAMEL

Light was not. All was still. The caravan Had ceased its song and motion by the bed Wherein the hill-stream tosses sleeplessly, The only sound, save one staccato note Interminably piped by tiny owls. The camp lay balmed in slumber, as the dead Are straitened in white trappings. Then a voice, Deeper than any dead black mountain pool Or blacker well where devils cool by day, Seemed to commune with Dreamer-of-the-Age, Who, peering through the cloak about his head, Challenged: "Who speaks?" The voice replied: "A friend Unknown to you." ... It was old Peacock Tous, The great grey camel with the crimson tail On whom the queen was wont to ride. He said:

"Sheikh, I was born among the Bakhtiari, The shelter of their hawthorn vales was mine; For me, unbroken to the loads men carry, The breeze that crowns their uplands glowed as wine To drink. I, Tous, the Peacock, whom men call so Because I ever moved as one above The common herd, was mad and merry. Also I knew not yet the prickled herb of Love.

"Spring tricked the desert out with flowered patterns For me to tread like flowered carpets wrought In patience by my master's painted slatterns-- He said that only Persian _women_ fought. Ah, youth is free and silken-haired and leggy! No camel knows why Allah makes it end, But He is wiser. Me the tribe's Il-Beggi Spied out and sent as tribute to a friend,

"A dweller in black tents, a nomad chieftain Of Khamseh Arabs or unruled Kashgai, Whose cattle-raids and rapines past belief stain The furthest page of camel-history. And shamefully the ragged sutlers thwacked us, Until I learned, as to this manner born, That pride must find a mother in the cactus And hope the milk of kindness in the thorn.

"O Sheikh, I found. A milk-white _nakeh_ followed The drove of males, and I would lag behind With her, no matter how the drivers holloa'ed-- Man never doubts that all but he are blind. At nightfall, when our champing echoed surly Beyond the cheerful circle of the fire, Something within me whispered, and thus early I bore the burden of the world's desire.

"But I was saddled with the will of Allah, Since one there was more fleet of foot than I, The chosen of the chief of the Mehallah, Whose nostrils quivered as he passed me by. To her, beside his paces and his frothing, My steadfastness was common as the air, My passion and my patience were as nothing, Because fate chose to make my rival fair.

"I suffered and was silent--some said lazy-- Until the seasons drove us to the plain. The nomads sold me then to a Shirazi. I never met my happiness again, But trod the same old measure back and forward, And passed a friend as seldom as a tree. Oh, heaviness of ever going shoreward, Of bringing all fruition to the sea!

"For I have fared from sea to sea like you, sirs, And with your like, not once but many times. Your path acclaims me eldest of its users, It tells my step as I foresee your rhymes. I know by heart a heartache's thousandth chapter As you have read the preface of delight. The silence you shall enter, I have mapped her. O singing caravan, I was To-night

"Long ere you dreamed. I dreaming of my lady Became the cargo-bearer we call Self. Two hundredweight of flesh that spouted Sa'di, A restless bag of bones intent on pelf, Have straddled me in turn.... Hashish and spices, Wheat, poisons, satins, brass, and graven stone, I, Tous, have borne all human needs and vices As solemnly as had they been my own.

"Moon-faced sultanas blue with kohl a-pillion, Grey ambergris, pink damask-roses' oil, Deep murex purple, beards or lips vermilion As Abu Musa's flaming scarlet soil I have borne--and dung and lacquer. I have flooded Bazaars with poppy-seed and filigree. Men little guess the stuff that I have studied, Or what their vaunted traffic seems to me.

"I am hardened to all wonderments and stories-- My ears have borne the hardest of my task-- I have carried pearls from Lingah up to Tauris, And Russian Jews from Lenkoran to Jask. I have watched fat vessels crammed by sweating coolies With all the rubbish that the rich devise, And often I have wondered who the fool is That takes it all, and whom the fool supplies.