  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. |
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