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

That 'pious dedication'? Which allowed,

Follows the law's exemption."

The king smiled,

And said: "Set free this good man. To thy wild

Bleak mountains, Afghan. Is the world so small

That thou must steal—if thou must steal at all—

From such a friend as this?" The Afghan fled,

The king across Ben Ali's shoulders passed

His heavy arm and to the gardens led,

Where fluttered groups of dancing girls, aghast,

Huddled aside, and through the night at last

Came to the river, and Ben Ali said:

BEN ALI.

"Hearken, O King, thy counsellor's report:

Thou keepest a young vizier in thy court

Unfit to be a counsellor to power,

Fit only to jest with an idle hour,

Who holds the scales of justice not in awe,

And lightly quibbles with the holy law,

And takes the lives of trembling men to be

The butt and plaything of his casuistry."

THE KING.

"Hearken, O Counsellor, thy king's desire:

Ere next thou blow ablaze the sullen fire

That smoulders in him, see that thou provide

Withal a secret place in which to hide,

Lest the king's darkened days on darkness fall

And miss for aye a bright face at his side;

For, be it truth thou sayest—yea, and truth

Is the sharp sword and javelin of youth—

That every merciful and smiling lie

Shall come to smile and curse us ere we die,

That the king standeth as a massive wall

Which leans to ruin, if it lean at all

Out of the upright line of equity;

Yet, ah, my bitter counsellor," said the king,

"When thou wouldst speak some truth that bears a sting,

I pray thee, speak as bearing love to me,

Who am of such as, lonely for their kind,

In dusty deserts of the spirit find

A naked penitence which no man sees.

My cup of life is drunken to the lees,

And thine hath still its bead along the brim;

And therefore, as in halls empty and dim,

Wakens thy step the echoes in my heart,

And all thy heady ways and reckless tongue,

That splits the marrow like a Kalmuck's dart,

Seem like my very own when first I flung

A challenge in the teeth of life. God knows,

The stars will not again look down on me

With their old radiant intensity;

Only I seem to see, as by the gleam

Of boatmen's torches mirrored in the stream

That bears them on, a faith that not alone

He builds His temple of enduring stone,

But sends the flowers that in its crannies creep,

And in His very scales of justice throws

The young man's dreams, the tears of them that weep,

The words the maiden murmurs to the rose."

The king was still. A passing boatman's oars

Sent the lit ripples to the shadowed shores.

A near muÉzzin's long, high-towered call

Went yearning up to star-lit architraves,

And dying left a silence over all,

Saving the grassy whisper of small waves.

THE BEGGAR

There was a man whom a king loved, and heard

With smiles his swift step and impetuous word

Among the slow-paced counsellors. To the young

Belong the careless hand, the daring tongue.

Pleasure and pride are the tall flowers that spring

Within the fertile shadow of the king.

There sat a beggar in the market-place,

Of sullen manner and a surly face,

Who caught him by the cloak; that with a stone

He smote the beggar's head, and so passed on,

Cassim Ben Ali, up the palace hill,

Leaving the beggar, fallen, grim, and still.

Sudden as the king's favour is his wrath.

Who for the morrow knows what joy he hath?

Nor can he pile it in his vaults to stay

The crowding misery of another day.

So fell Ben Ali for an arrowy word

And barbed jest that the king's anger stirred,

And he was led beyond the noisy brawls

Of traders chaffering at the market stalls,

And in a pit thrown near the city walls.

Whither the beggar came, and came alone,

A cobble in his hand, beside the pit.

"The wise man waiteth till the time is fit,

The foolish hasteneth to grief," he said,

Casting the cobble on Ben Ali's head:

"I am that beggar, and behold that stone."

Ben Ali on the morrow was restored

To the benignant presence of his lord,

And sending for the beggar, softly said:

"This is that stone."

The beggar bowed his head:

'"And this my head, which is among the lowly,

As thine is high, and God is just and holy,"

And threw himself lamenting on the floor.

Ben Ali pondered then a moment more.

"Thou sayest truly, God is just; and lo!

Both of our heads have ached beneath a blow.

I in my time grow wiser, and divine

The beating of thy head will not heal mine;

And have considered and have found it wise,

To exchange with thee some other merchandise.

Take this gold dinar, and remember then

That God is just, if so I come again

Into a pit and ask return of thee."

Once more Ben Ali was brought low, to see

The king's clenched hand, fixed look, and rigid frown,

Thrust from the palace gate to wander down,

Stripped of his silks, in poverty and shame,

Into the market where the traders came

With files of sag-necked camels o'er the sands,

Bringing the corded wares of hidden lands.

And walking there with eyes now wet and dim,

He sought the beggar, found, and said to him:

"Remember thine exchange of merchandise,

Who sayest, God is just and 'thou art wise."

"Who sayeth 'God is just,' speaks not of me;

Who calleth thee a fool, means none but thee,"

Answered the beggar. "For I understood

To pay the evil back and keep the good

Is increase of the good in merchandise;

Therefore I keep the dinar, and am wise."

Which thing was brought to the king's ear, and he

Summoned the two to stand before his knee,

And took the dinar from the beggar's hand,

And giving to Ben Ali, gave command

To those who waited for his word: "Bring stones

That he may beat with them this beggar's bones,

Who mocks at justice, saying 'God is just,'

And boasting wisdom, fouls her in the dust."

Ben Ali through his meditation heard

The counsellors approving the king's word,

And spoke above their even murmuring:

"Let justice be with God and with the king,

Who are not subject to a moment's chance,

Made and unmade by shifting circumstance.

This is the wisdom of the poor and weak:

The smitten cheek shall warn its brother cheek,

And each man to his nook of comfort run,

His little portion of the morning sun,

His little corner of the noonday shade,

His wrongs forgotten as his debts unpaid.

Let not the evil and the good we do

Be ghosts to haunt us, phantoms to pursue.

I have the dinar and would fain be clear

Of further trading with this beggar here;

For he nor I have caused the world to be,

Nor govern kingdoms with our equity."

"Art thou so poor then, and the beggar wise,

God's justice hidden, and the king's astray?"

Answered the king, slow-voiced, with brooding eyes.

"Art thou so weak, and strong to drive away

Far from to-day the ghost of yesterday?

Free is thy lifted head, while on mine own

The gathered past lies heavier than the crown?

So be it as thou sayest, with him and thee,

Thou who forgivest evil bitterly."

So spoke the king. Ben Ali's steps once more

Were swift and silken on the palace floor.

The beggar went with grim, unchanging face

Back to his begging in the market-place.

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