Part 4

"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.