  An intimation of some previous life? Or dark dream—by my waking soul divined— Of some uncertain sleep? in which the sin Of some past life, a life that some one lived— Not I, yet I,—long, long ago in Spain, I live again.... Wherein again I see From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,— Damascened corselet broken, his camail And armet shattered,—deep within the eve's Anger of brass, that burned around his helm, A hurrying flame,—a galloping glitter,—one Ride arrow-wounded. And the city catch Wild tumult from his coming, wilder fear— A cry before him and a wail behind, Of walls beleaguered; ravin; conquered kings: Triumphant Taric; shackled Spain—revenge. And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's, Housed near the Tagus—squalid and alone, Save for his slave,—a dog he beat and starved,— Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon, A battle beacon, westerns; all my bones A visible hunger; famished with the fear, Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him—I, who held Him, heart and soul, more hated than his God, Stood silent. Fools had laughed. I saw my way. War-times grow weapons, and the blade I found Was hacked but pointed.—Well I knew his ways: The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems And bags of doublas.—Well I knew his ways. No figure, woven in the hangings, where He hugged his riches in that secret room, Was half so still as I, who gauntly stole Behind him, humped and stooping; and his heart Clove to the center, stabbing from behind, Thrice thro' his tattered tunic, murrey-dyed. Forward he fell, his old face 'mid his gold, Grayer and thinner than the moon of morn, While slow the blood dripped, oozing through the cloth, Black, and thick-clotting round the oblong wounds. Great pearls of Oman, whiter than the moon; Rubies of BadakhshÂn, whose bezels wept Slim tears of poppy-purpled flame; and rich, Rose, ember-pregnant carbuncles, wherein Fevered a captive crimson, blurred with light The table's raven cloth. Dim bugles wan Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts; Fire-opals, savage and mesmeric with Voluptuous flame, long, sweet and sensuous as Deep eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed With talismanic violet, from tombs, Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans, Scattered the velvet: and like gledes amid,— Splintering the light from rainbow-arrowed orbs,— Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of Golconda.... (One a dervish once had borne Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun, Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon, Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held Of some wild tribe.—Bleached in the perishing waste, A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones, A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull One eyeball blazed—the diamond. At Aleppo Bartered ... a bauble for his desert love.) Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem heaped on gem, Flashed, rutilating in the taper's light,— Unearthly splinters of a rainbowed flame,— A blaze of irised fire; and his face, Long-haired, white-sunk among them. And I took All! yea! all! all!—jewel and gold and gem!— Although his curse burned in them! 'though, me-seemed, Each burning jewel glared a separate curse. Can dead men work us evil from the grave? Can crime infest us so that fear will slay?... Richer than all Castile and yet—not dare Drink but from cups of Roman murra,—spar Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold,—spar sensitive To poison! I, no fool! and yet—a fool To fear a dead Jew's malice!... Yet, how else? Feasting within the music of my halls, While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes, Diaphanous, more tenuous than those famed Of loomed Amorgos or of silken Kos, Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed, Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolf'sbane-slain! |
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