  Serdar-i-Jang, the Wazir of the west, Of all mankind had served his country best By weeding it. The terror of his name Lapped up the barren Pusht-i-kuh like flame, Till the Shah smiled: "My other lords of war lose Battles, but he wrings love from my Baharlus." He smote them hip and thigh. The man was brave. Having four wives, he needs must take for slave Whatever captive baggage crossed his path, And never feared love for its aftermath. Thus fared the Wazir while his locks were blue. The silver in them found him captive too. The singing caravan in chorus flowed Past the clay porticoes of his abode. She came, he saw, was conquered—like a puppet Drawn to the window, to the street and up it, Forth to the desert, leaving in the lurch His pleasant wars and policies to search For what? He knew not. Haply for the truth Whose home is open eyes, not dreams or youth. But this he dimly knew, that something strange, Beauty, had come within his vision's range; And a new splendour, running through the world, Drummed at the postern of his senses, hurled Him forth, this warrior proud and taciturn, Footsore upon a pilgrimage to learn Humility.... These beggars, in whose wake He toiled, ne'er paused for him to overtake Their echoes. When at dusk he joined their ring None rose or bowed. All watched him. Could he sing? And he could not, for never had he thrown His days away on verse! He sat alone, So that his silence stamped him with the badge Of hanger-on or menial of this haj. Thrust as he would with much unseemly din, He found no place beside the palanquin, Till Seyid Rida, scholar of Nejaf, Took pity on him, saying: "You shall laugh At these black days when, having served your time, You share the sovereignty of Persian rhyme. Be patient, pray to Allah, O my son, For power of worship. It shall come anon...." Seyid Rida spoke in vain. The Wazir's place So far behind the Queen, her perfect face But half-divined, as Sight denied to Faith, A doubt lest love itself should be a wraith Dazzling but mocking him, these stirred his passion To sworn defiance, to his last Circassian And thoughts of many a woman taken by force, Restive and then submissive as a horse. And now.... He followed in the wake of vision Lofty and pure as Elburz snows. Derision Would follow him in turn!... He shook his fist Toward the feet his soul would fain have kissed: "Oh, I was born for women, women, women. Through my still boyhood rang the first alarm; And since that terror ever fresh invaders Have occupied and sacked me to their harm. I am the cockpit where endemic fever Holds the low country in a broken lease From waves that ruined dykes appear to welcome. Only one great emotion spares me—Peace! "I have grown up for women, women, women; And suffering has had her fill of me. My ears still echo with receding laughter, As shells retain the voices of the sea. I am the gateway only, not the garden, That opens from a crowded thoroughfare. I stand ajar to every passing fancy, And all have knocked, but none have rested there. "And I shall die for women, women, women, But not for love of them. Adventure calls Or waits with old romance to disappoint me Behind the promise of surrendered walls. I am the vessel of some mad explorer, That sails to seek for treasure in strange lands Without a steersman in a crew of gallants, And, finding fortune, ends with empty hands." A deathly silence fell. Green-turbaned men Fell noiselessly to sharpening their knives On their bare hardened feet. Seyid Rida sighed: "Alas, your heart is set upon reward For gifts of self. You cannot understand Love loves for nothing, brother. Those who serve God the most purely cannot count that He Will love them in return...." The Wazir scowled. But Dreamer-of-the-Age took him aside, "I would unfold a story like a carpet. The camel Tous told it to me last night: "King Suleiman's wives were as jewels, his jewels as stones of the desert In number. His concubines herded as desert-gazelles in their grace, That answered his bidding as meekly as all his wild animal kingdom, The beasts and the birds and the fishes. Yet the world was as pitch on his face. "Now it chanced that the ruler of Saba had news by a merchant of peacocks From this king like a hawk-god of Egypt, whose beak was set deep in the gloom Of his grape-purple beard, and she said: 'We shall see how his vanities stead him When from under the arch of his eyebrows he sees my feet enter his room.' "For her feet were far whiter than manna. Her body was white as the cry Of a child when the chords of hosanna draw the beauty of holiness nigh. The droop of her eyelids would fan a revolt from Baghdad to Lake Tsana, Her fingers were veined alabaster. The sprites of her escort would sigh, "As they bathed her with sun set in amber and cooled in the snow of a cloudlet, And taught her chief eunuch to clamber up moonbeams as fleet as a ghost: These, lavish of reed-pipe and tamburine, slaves of the Son of Daoud, let Her palanquin down into Zeila—gambouge and magenta, the coast!" And the Wazir cried, "Ha!" to the rhymes. "Round the harbour a hoopoe was strutting, for Suleiman's Seal had appointed Him messenger-bird |
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