Author: Ameen Rihani
Date: 2023-05-22T17:17:20+00:00
Keywords: Arab American poetry
Description: A collection of Ameen Rihani’s poetry.
Publisher: Standard Ebooks

Poetry

By Ameen Rihani.

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To my sisters
Saada and Adele

To my brother
Joseph

Salaam

From Syria to America

Pardon, dear reader.

The stranger at thy gate, hailing from the Orient, holds out to thee a gaunt and tattooed hand. This hand has often made mud-pies from earth that might have once mapped out the stars; or, in a drunken vision, heard the grumblings of a god and made of them a captivating creed: the brain of an ancient Assyrian astronomer; the spine of a Semitic sage; the cheeks of a Jezebel or a St. Takla; the heart of a slave that added beauty and horror to the chariot of a Babylonian king or a Roman conqueror:—any or all of these might have besmeared this hand.

Wilt thou take it? The hand of a personified illusion, of an exiled dream, of an Oriental who makes himself thy guest.

He comes not to preach Buddhism to thee; nor Mohammedanism; nor Babyism; nor any other ism made picturesque and alluring by red caftans, white turbans, blue sashes and ambergris-scented lies.

The only message he brings from his vine-crowned and pine-girdled Mother to bewitching and enriching America is that of love and longing and lacrimal. He came from the Mountains of Lebanon, from under the shadow of the Acropolis of Baalbak, to learn from the Yankees the way to do things—the way to rise and flourish and expand; or, as they put it, the way to get there and be it—from a mundane point of view, of course. It has been observed, however, that the spots of a leopard are irremovable; and so is the lethargy of an Oriental. The writer has found the strenuous life to be as depressing and dwarfing as prison life itself; and so he has fallen back to the habit of dreaming, and singing, and taking things easy, even in restless and dreamless America. This sounds paradoxical; it is like going from the country of Trusts and Equality to establish a trolley-car system in the Lebanons. Even this might be possible fifty years hence, despite the opposition of those ancient hills. The writer has forsaken their cedars and pines, their vineyards and fig groves to walk in the shadows of skyscrapers and watch the sun rise languidly from behind a mound of bricks or a smoking chimney, and sink a-blushing behind the grimy walls of gaseous Communipaw.

“So fair a sun
Setting over so foul a town!”

one would exclaim; but nature delights in paradoxes, and freaks, and rococo. These songs, dear reader, might not even deserve to be classified with like phenomena; but, as the sincere expression of a soul just emerging from the abyss, they deserve to stand. If, however, thou thinkest them no worse in spirit and merit than the amyelencephalic discourses of a pundit, or the emetic dissertations of a Zamackshary, then remember as thou settest the book aside that the author does not appeal to your charity, nor to your justice. Thou art the host, gentle reader; and he relies on the hospitality and cordiality due a guest.

Poetry

Ever to Be

My far cry, though no one should echo—
Though no one to listen should stand,
I shall dare with my burden the darkness
And I shall not retreat from this land;
Though I’m hurled ’neath the feet of the millions,
Who struggle their places to keep,
The sea-nymphs still bathe with my Fancy
And the Dryads still sweeten my sleep.

Though I’m crushed, cast away and forgotten—
Though I’m buried in the dust of their cars,
I can see through their madness above me—
I can feel the quick pulse of the stars;
Though my head be the foot-stool of tyrants,
Though my back be a step to their throne,
I still dwell with the kings of Orion
And I walk with the sun-queen alone.

Though the fire of my youth should consume me—
Though my body a brimstone should be,
I can draw on the clouds for their water
And behold! I’ve of water a sea;
And though roofless, and friendless, and hopeless,
And loveless, and godless I stand,
The waves of my Life shall continue
To murmur and laugh on the Strand.

Upon the Peak of Sanneen

My soul and I, upon the peak
Of Sanneen grim and grey,
Sat musing in the twilight of
A sombre summer day.

“Great Saturn and the Moon are gone
Together o’er the sea;
But will great Saturn e’er return
Should he elope with thee?

Ah well, who knows? when thou art gone
I, too, shall sink within the brine—
I, too, shall sail above this peak
And signal yonder groves of pine.

Behold the melancholy sky
Of this forgotten land;
On this side are the valleys bleak,
On this, the desert sand.”

“I hear the moaning of the wind,”
My sad companion said;
“The snow is gathering in me
And the night is overhead.

Long have we dwelt together, friend,
In our sweet ennui;
But were I now to take my leave,
Alas, what would I be?”

“O, think not of departing,
Ah, too young I am to die;
I’ll find the magic wings; and there
Still hangs a friendly sky.

Let us above these pines, and clouds,
And scents awhile yet dwell;—
Where wouldst thou go, if thou wert now
To sigh a last farewell?”

Thou seest the busy elements
Dissolving one by one
The souls that are acquitted,
For the all-absorbing sun.

Let’s sing the song of darkness then;
Thy prison is the Whole;—
What canst thou do, where wilt thou go,
What wilt thou be, my Soul?

Thou wouldst not be the air that weighs
Upon the rising dust;
Thou wouldst not be the fog that chokes
The air in savage lust.

Thou wouldst not be the clouds that block
The smoke’s way to a star;
Nor linger in the guilty tears
Of clouds before the bar.

Thou wouldst not be the rain that taunts
The all-devouring sea,
Itself destroying many a nest
In bush and rock and tree.

Thou wouldst not be the thunder’s tongue
Spell-binding all the spheres;
Nor wouldst thou be the lightning blade
That stabs and disappears.

Thou wouldst not be the dew that falls
Alike on thorn and flower;
Nor even the morning zephyr
That blows o’er den and bower.

Thou wouldst not be the virgin snow
Set free from yonder clouds,
Only to melt beneath the feet
Of surging human crowds.

“No! none of these,” my Soul replied;
“I’ll shiver ever thrall;
O let me rise, for I would be
The sky above them all.”

The Philistine

The cricket to the corn-crake came one day,
Shivering, yet buzzing in his wanton way,
And said: “I’m slain
By hunger, brother, turn thou not from me;
’Tis winter, and I only beg of thee
A little grain.”

The corn-crake grinned and said in tone sublime:
“Where wert thou hidden in the harvest time,
Thou dinning drone?
Why didst thou not come with us to the fields
To gather something for thy winter meals
Of what had grown?”

“O, I was entertaining with my rhymes
The vineyards, and the fig trees, and the thymes
The summer long.”
“No then,” replied the corn-crake, “not a seed
Have I for such as thou; go home and feed
Upon thy Song.”

My Burnoose

Into this world they tell me I was sent
Wrapt in a burnoose, which was rudely rent
And flung away, by her who first didst touch
My steaming flesh; I never loved her much,
The surly, stolid, sordid, spectral hag:
For never would my star of fortune lag—
No dwarf of earth to oppose my will would dare—
If my sebaceous burnoose she did spare,
And if around my neck, the ajouz says,
It hung, locked in a charm, for twenty days.
But ever since the amulet was torn,
The curse of gods and jinn and men I’ve worn;
And to my flesh it stuck—a Nessus shirt—
Despite the oozing blood, and not spurt
Of power, alas! is left me to control
The stinging tongue of an avenging soul.

A Spring Dirge

Sad, sad, sad—
In vain thou comest, Spring;
Sad, sad, sad—
In vain thy birds all sing:
Perfumeless is thy rose;
Thy breeze, which softly blows,
Disturbs my sea of woes,
Ay, Death is on the wing.

Gone, gone, gone—
Go seek her, mocking Spring;
Gone, gone, gone—
Aside thy garlands fling;
Destroy thy laughing bower;
Call back an April shower
To weep with me this hour:
He came, not reckoning.

Love, love, love—
What sendest thou with Spring?
Love, love, love—
What tidings these birds bring!
They tell me they can hear
Thee, in a higher sphere;
But can that dry a tear,
Or give my wish a wing?

Fardi wa Nafli

This was written in the hospital where Mr. Rihani’s sister suffered for more than two years. She was taken sick not long before the day appointed for her wedding.

I

“Here she is: O take her not away so soon!
Spare her youth—the fatal cup from her withhold!
Let her groan within my arms in life’s forenoon;
Let me still my soul within her eyes unfold.”
God of Love! my faith in thee is not yet gray:
Grant that she may walk again,
Free from suffering and pain—
Give her life to see the altar’s light one day.

II

In the night, before the day that never came,
On the way with poppies and gardenias strewn,
With her music and her torch’s holy flame,
She was struck and never since saw sun or moon.
God of Light! refuse her not another ray:
Her bridal garment joins with me
In beseeching, begging thee—
Give her life to see the altar’s light one day.

III

All the sorrow earth contains I can support,
All the agony and pain I can endure;
Years of misery will seem surprising short,
If to me thou leav’st her, though without a cure.
All my dreams before thy throne, O God, I slay;
These my offerings let be,
These my sacrifice to thee—
Give her life to see the altar’s light one day.

IV

“Hurry here! O get the doctors—call the nurse—
Call the priest—be quick—some more digitaline—
He is here, alas! before you all—a hearse.”
Death has passed us by; take up the violin!
To Thy heart my music fain would find its way;
Every sound Thy grace would earn;
Let it not as sad return—
Give her life to see the altar’s light one day.

V

Every wound and every sigh and groan and tear,
Every drop of Saada’s melting flesh and hope
Now ascend, wrapt in this music, pale and blear—
Around Thy throne, in gyves of pain, they blindly grope.
What remains, what’s gone of her before Thee lay:
Faith and Doubt are at Thy door—
Mother, brother, pray, implore—
Give her life to see the altar’s light one day.

Adele

Adele! a name that kindled in the breast
Of France’s first-born of the fairest Muse
A flame in which a thousand colors fuse
And shame the April rainbows of the West;
But I can only stand upon the crest
Of Song’s most sacred Mount and bring excuse
That I have begged, and since the gods refuse,
I steal, and with the theft I thee invest,

A Sun or Moon of Song for all my oceans
Of purest love, an ornament at best—
A bunch of stars—a wreath for my emotions;
But if the gods with sisters dear are blest,
To me they all must come in joy or sorrow,
From me they all must steal, or beg, or borrow.

Nectar and Blood

I

If I should worship at thine ancient shrine,
Where thy good sons, incensed by love of war,
Now clamor, as their fathers did of yore—
If I should sacrifice what is not mine,
Nor any living god’s, nor even thine—
If for the sake of honor I must pour
This cup of life upon thy barren shore,
How will it fare then with my love divine?

No! let thy sons go forth to burn and slay:
Let them for love of thee and glory smear
And tear the love of all that’s pure and dear;
Let them this loveless love in rage display;
I can not join them; no, I can not cheer
As they beneath my window pass today.

II

What care I for the tears the maudlin crowd
Sheds o’er my bier—for praise of Church and State—
For glory that remains within the gate
Of worldly things—for men’s esteem avowed—
For freedom that is not with love endowed—
For fame that lingers oft and comes too late,
When these the sorrow of my love create
And haunt her with the shadow of my shroud?

How cowardly, self-centered have I grown—
How dead to true and noble feelings all?
Why not, when they the human soul enthrall—
Why not, when they the beast in man enthrone?
I cling to love, and with love I will fall,
Unwept, unsung, unhonored and unknown.

III

What will these kings and war-lords of the land
And all their ministers of murder fell
Do with their arms and fleets—all tools of hell—
If every son of man resolve to stand
A-wielding, king-like, in his home the wand,
Beside the ones he loves and honors well?
Can force this gentle host of peace compel,
When loving hearts their amber wings expand?

O love, though hounded, outlawed we may be—
Though Slander, dagger-drawn, be on our trail—
Though Hatred with her hydra tongues should rail
At us, and though left sinking in the sea
Of ostracism, ay, never will I quail,
But will now and forever cling to thee.

Resurrection

The ghost of Winter stalks amidst the boughs
Of Spring and drags along his icy shroud;
The corn flowers and the wheat, with broken vows,
Are now beneath the storm untimely bowed.

O Winter, thou wert buried on the hills;
Thine epitaph was written with melted snow;
Thy skeleton is in the barren rills,
Where once thy silvery life-blood used to flow.

Why visitest the glimpses of the sun
So soon, what message bring’st thou from the dead?
Why rudely interrupt the children’s fun
And havoc among the Guests of Summer spread?

Behold, the branches shiver, the blossoms fall;
The lilac in the leaves a shelter seeks;
Thy savage winds the Queen of May appal—
They pale with summer’s dust her rosy cheeks.

Withhold the solemn music of thy gale
Until the golden notes of Spring are spun;
The opera in the trees is but begun,
O, drown it not with thy benighted wail.

For thee May’s winged madonnas will not sing,
Nor in thy presence will they now appear:
Begone, that their sweet voices we may hear—
Begone, the world today belongs to Spring.

Disarmed Desire

O, how the light drifts from the hemlock grove,
How in the night disarmed Desires do rove!

A sister to the dumb hydrangea thou,
A mystery born of the Then and Now.

The color on thy clouded face—ah me!
Is’t from the embers that still burn in thee?

Has not the forge of suffering robbed thee of
The flame with which weak mortals feed their love?

Wilt thou, no longer fancying the light,
Conjure a virgin flame from darkest night?

And feed it with the salvias of a soul,
That would, but yet—alas! she seeks the Whole.

The hand that broke the screen, the heart that lied—
Where are they? Come, the path of truth is wide.

The silvery cataracts of roaring rills
Meander in the shadows of the hills;

And their bass music—does it not arise
From that descent that leads up to the skies?

O how disarmed Desire uprises, how—
Does not the darkness crown the Lightning’s brow?

Yet how I wish, yet how I shrink, when I
Behold thee—ah, she’s ever in mine eye!

If thy pink, blue and golden hues disclose
The secret, might not that undo the rose?

Thou sister to the dumb hydrangea, when
Will all thy sombre musings rise again?

O, how the light drifts from the hemlock grove,
How in the night disarmed Desires do rove!

A Better Woe

Of all my desert days
Thou art the only one
Upon whose sandy face
A strip of pleasure’s foliage trembling grows;
Of all the winding ways.
Which with my rapture shone
But one can I retrace,
And there the barren breast of beauty glows.

Of all the dread desires,
That beat within me still,
One shakes the sacred fear
And hurls me into the arms of her below;
But oh, how life suspires—
How soon after the thrill
Of joy I shudder, I hear
My murmuring soul pine for a better woe.

The First and Last

O kiss me now; the end is near
The bright beginning; kiss me, dear.
I would not that thou shouldst one day
In bitter thought remembering say:

“When in the high tide of our bliss
Upon these lips I slew the kiss
That should have lived.”
The kiss I fear—
The poison, ah, the lie, my dear.

Fear not; O kiss me whilst I can’t
Refuse; am I to-morrow thine?
Wilt thou be near me when I pant?

I shall not go; thou wilt not pine.
Sweet thoughts!—Alas, the first, the last!

Nay, nay! I cling to thee: the past
Is dying in the lap of night
In which our star is shining bright.

The fingers in the shadow, there!
What are they weaving? Look, a shroud!
Come, purse thy lips; do not despair;
Take hold my hand and speak aloud.

No, no! For whom that shroud, for whom?
Not for our love—not for our joy?

Then seal thou with thy lips my doom,
Ay, with a kiss this life destroy!

In the Meadow

The shadow of thy curls I see
Upon thy lovely face;
And just a little wish is mine—
The shadow to embrace.

On thy black and silken tresses,
Ah, one longs to feast the sight;
But the shadows of their beauty,
Hanging on thy cheeks of light,

From my lips, exact a tribute,
Which I pay here in this meadow:
Blush not, my most winsome maiden;
I have only kissed the shadow.

O, Sweet Sometime

O, sweet Sometime, the gardens bloom the while I wait;
Each moment melts a tear of joy before thy gate;
It is thy pleasure that I burn—it is my fate,
O, sweet Sometime!

O, when the moment in this interval is born.
When through this sleeping splendor breaks the lingering morn,
And when thy sensual silence laughs my noise to scorn—
O, sweet Sometime!

Spare me the vacant moment yet—O just awhile;
Expectancy, thy sweetest daughter, will beguile
My yearning hours; the shades reflected by her smile
Are now my haunts, O sweet Sometime.

The waiting while, O sweet Sometime, I can enjoy;
Thy heralding shadows every beating pang destroy,
And with their breath of musk and myrrh my soul they cloy,
O, sweet Sometime!

I tremble, I forget, I throb when once I hear
The dying interval announcing thou are near;
A touch, a groan, a kiss and thou wilt disappear,
With bitten lip, O, sweet Sometime!

And then the memory—O, how it will oppress!
Far sweeter is Expectancy—ah, let me press
The vigor from her limbs to mine; I’ll yet caress
The waiting while, O, sweet Sometime!

A Bed of Flame

I saw one day on the horizon grey,
As with my load I wandered near the sea,
A whiff of smoke embrace the sleeping sun;
And just as their enchantment had begun,
A lonely cloud that roved above the lea
Passed by their couch and hid them from the day.

I saw this and my soul, long silent, cried:
“Would that I were the whiff of smoke
Now sleeping with the sun!
In beds of flame, how often was I tried—
How often have I ’neath the stroke
Of God or Satan shone!”

The Sister of Death

Ah, talk to me of something else, I pray;
I’m weary of the dreams that bring nor sleep,
Nor rest, nor love, nor something from the deep,
Where buried are the gods of yesterday;
Ah, talk to me of Death that takes away
My little sorrows, as they hide and peep,
My little joys, as they disport and leap,
My little vanities, my budless May.

The burden of my virtues and my sins,
The burden of authority that grins
At every effort, ah, the burden kills;
I know that Death a Sister hath, but where,
Where can I find thee, Love, when shall I share
The sweetness of the silence of the hills?

Retribution

How I did hold in deep contempt
The slaves and queens of love!
How I disguised my feelings when
I met a deer or a dove!
How I did smile and sniff and rail
At lovers young and old;
How I denied, in days gone by,
O love, thy charms untold!
But now, alas! I find myself
In chains at Beauty’s shrine:
The chains whose power I have denied
Are sapping, sapping mine.

Let Thine Eyes Whisper

Grieve not, for I am near thee;
Sigh not, for I can hear thee;
Wash from thy heart all memory of past wrong;
Doubt not that doubts besmear thee;
Speak not, for I do fear thee;
Let thine eyes whisper love’s conciling song.

Lilatu Laili

At night on the radiant Rialto,
By the stars in their houses of glass,
I strolled with my soul in my pocket
And prayed that my night might not pass;
I have seen ’neath the high heels of Beauty
My heart and my soul and my shame;
That form! O, how often it lured me,
And how often I lost in the game!

And how often I walked in the shadow
Of a Laila a mile and a mile!
But the rapture and bliss of a vision
Would end in a great gush of bile.
To the hints that her garment would whisper
I have listened but I would not dare;
I have seen every one of my fancies
Retreat in the dark of her hair.

I have wished that each building around us
Was a cedar, a poplar, a pine;
That the men and the women were statues,
And the rain that was falling was wine;
That the lights were ethereal flowers;
That the cars were the nooks in the wood—

“O, enough!” she exclaimed as she kissed me,
“This attic and couch are as good.”

Midnight Mood

There’s one upon whose youthful breast I fain would die:
My soul upon her lingering lips through mine I’d pour
In torrents that would reach and thrill Love’s every shore—
In floods that drown the earth and rise to drown the sky.

But how can I? Alas, the leaves must shield the flower,
And silent see her proffering to the butterfly
Her cheeks, her honeyed lips, her soul—O, how can I?
In all the worlds, to change my being, is there no power?

How oft I rise at night to probe the human laws,
My beating temples all my waking hours recording!
And nor solution, nor repose my task affording.—
How oft my carnal silence cries for the bliss that was!

The bliss that generous nature gives, that man denies—
A bliss that’s chained in idle words and damned codes
And creeds and customs creeping in their dark abodes—
The bliss that’s lost within an endless maze of lies.

Pray, tell me, must the North Wind blow and sweep by rule?
Must he the virgin ponds and springs and rills avoid?
See how the ocean, panting, rising, overjoyed,
Holds out her arms to him—why not the limpid pool?

And thou, O human Ocean—would that I could give
In equal measure, when beneath me thou art parting!
O, generous, fiery soul, in love though I am wanting,
My flesh, within thy passion’s hearth, will glow and live.

Thou art the twilight; I’m the dawn; yet we shall meet
And flood the firmament with fire and rainbow beauty.
No unfed sun or moon shall rob us of our booty,
And if the gods should frown—is not rebellion sweet?

But ah, live Twilight! why cannot the Dawn be true?
Why can’t I quaff from thy sad lips, as thou, from mine?
Why can’t this heart, forgetting once, as well be thine?
How can I my most holy passion tame, subdue?

That youthful breast, imprisoned, I see through thine own;
Those Eastern eyes cannot be hidden by thy flame;
That form, as I am in thine arms—O, do not blame—
In mine I fancy—let me die in shame alone!

Thy Smile

Outside the gates of night, above the moon,
Where breatheth none but gods, where light alone
Forever rules from his star-studded throne,
Where Melancholy never reaches noon,
And where the Pleiades their harps attune—
There in the centre of the lightning zone,
Upon the zephyr which the storm hath sown,
Thou first wert formed with pleasure to commune.
And now in Pleasure’s world, upon the face
Of bright and gay Bohemia’s fairest child
The zephyr dallies with the lightning flash;
The smile divine, as well the subtle grace
Are deeply there impressed, by naught defiled—
There joy’s received as well as paid in cash.

Unadorned

Regardless of the cries of priests and sages
I strove to give my bleeding soul her wages;
And each embrace or memory of one
Is worth to me the treasures of the ages,
Is worth to me the treasures of the ages.

Each shadow of a kiss or fond embrace
Down in the depth of solitude I trace;
And in the corners of my darkest den
The fallen gods of pleasure find a place,
The fallen gods of pleasure find a place.

And though knee-deep I find myself in hell,
And though the flames around my cheeks should swell,
I shall not loose my grip on Allah’s throne,
I shall not fall alone, I know full well,
I shall not fall alone, I know full well.

Dissolution

I languish in thy penetrating clasp,
Just as a bird entangled on a bough
Shaken by the wind;
Yet here would I be happy in the grasp
Of death; but in thy breast I’m hidden now,
And death is blind.

I melt beneath thy storm of kisses, dear,
Just as the gum upon the almond tree
Of melting when alone and far from thee:
Melts ’neath the rain;
Yet would I melt to-night than live in fear
O, storm again!

A Serenade

I

The moon hath said her sad good-bye,
My sleeping queen;
And all the stars are wondering why
Thou art unseen.
Behold! abashed, they take to flight,
As through the casement breaks thy light.
Arise, my dawn, arise!
Arise, my queen serene!

II

The field of heaven is all thine own,
My peerless star,
Just as my heart is thine alone,
Be near or far.
So let thy face adorn the night,
And flood it with thy dazzling light.
Arise, my queen, arise!
Arise, to my guitar!

III

The vaults above all vacant seem,
My sweetest flower;
And for thy scent, the cherubim
Long at this hour.
A moment from thy sweet dream part,
Though in that dream be wove my heart.
Arise, my queen, arise!
Let fall thy perfume shower.

The Brass Bed

I love thy color and thy symmetry;
I love the art that wrought thy glittering arms,
Thy canopy, thy satin portieres too;
I love the silks and feathers on thy breast—
The cushions and the pillows and the quilts:
I love thine every part.
Yet still more do I love to rest in thee—
To dream of art’s perfection in thy frame;
Of paths as smooth, as shining as thy limbs;
Of scenes as exquisite as thy coils;
Of nooks as warm as thine hospitable bosom,
As cool and as refreshing as thy veinless naked arms,
I dream of all beneath thy soothing mantle.

But O, I love my dreams much more than thee,
And one sad soul much more than all my dreams.

If thou hadst but an eye to see,
To look upon the guest that lay upon thy floor
Beneath thy silken ceiling!
O, hadst thou but an ear to hear
The plaintive chirpings of this swallow-soul.
Couldst thou but feel her forehead
Moistened with the sweat of hope and pain.
For forty moons she lay within thine arms,
Rubbing her erstwhile rosy cheeks
Against the ulcers of Ayoub of yore.
Couldst thou but see, O Bed of Brass,
Couldst thou but hear, couldst thou but feel—

Of what use all thy showy stuff—
Thy glittering brass, the filigree of art,
Thy floor of down and feather cushions all,
Thy snow-white mantles, satin tapestries?

Beauty and Pain!
Death will not come with thee, O Pain!
Life will not come with thee, O Beauty!
The fires of hell are but a taper’s flame compared to this.

Thy guest, O Bed of Brass,
Looks on thee with a yearning glance.
And yet her soul, bearing the torch of Pain,
Is searching all the worlds for Death.

Three Golden Threads

(After de Lisle.)

Like yonder swallow, I would soar away—
Above the sea, far from this buzzing mart;
But how can I? A cruel, little fay
Has fettered with three golden threads my heart.

Her honeyed tongue the one; her eyes the other;
The third her lips; and that completes her art.
No fruits from other gardens can I gather,
For she has tied with golden threads my heart.

O, how I would asunder rend my chain,
And from the tears and pangs of love depart;
Ah, no! ’tis better that I die in pain
Than break the golden threads of my poor heart.

Independent Blossoms

When the spring boughs were told
Soon the rose will unfold
Herself in the bower
Of which she is queen,
Their blossoms, beguiling
The sad leaves, said smiling:
“No slaves to a flower
Have we ever been.”

Our lords are the birds.
And they love not in words;
They sing when we smile
And sob when we fall;
Her lord is the liar—
The thief or the buyer—
Who smells her the while
She lives, and that’s all.

The God of My Goddess

The old gods and their slaves I’ve deserted;
The new gods I’ve shunned at first sight;
And my god is the god of the goddess
That presides at my feast of delight.
But once, when the dark moment lingered,
I questioned the god she adores;
To his throne I implored her to lead me,
And, behold! I’m the god she implores.

A Peasant’s Song

O, thou, who loved me once,
From thy Pagoda glance;
Shoot down a poisoned lance:
All’s well that comes from thee.

Look back, look down once more;
Dear was to thee this shore;
I see thee nevermore
Beneath the olive tree.

Remains my station low,
Whilst thou dost greater grow;
Ah, fate hath struck the blow
That parted thee and me.

How can I bear my fate,
How can I loveless wait
In this most sorry state,
When thou art far and free?

Far from the soul that swore
On love’s abysmal door
To cling forevermore
To none on earth but thee;

Free from the sacred plight
Which, to dispel the night,
Thou madest, when I quite
Fell near thy bended knee.

Dost thou not still remember
Love’s May and Love’s December?
Both burned their sacred ember
In our sweet company.

Dost hear the echoes fall
Within thy gilded hall?
Dost thou not ever recall
The day thou wert like me?

When all thy gardens bloom,
Look out into the gloom;
There does the flame consume
Thy budless lilac tree.

There often thou didst play
A-mindless of the day
When soul to soul would say:
“No more of thee and me.”

And when withers thy rose,
Throw to the wind that blows
This way a leaf; who knows
What therein I can see.

And till my course is run
I’ll count them one by one—
These leaves; and may the sun
Of joy ne’er set on thee.

Her First Sorrow

’T is but a score of hours when he didst swear
My sorrow and my joy to share,
Despite the fates, fore’er;
But now he’s gone to cash again his lie;
Others his shame with me will wear,
Why should I die?

Last night his lips my very feet didst burn;
His kisses dropt, my love to earn,
Whichever way he’d turn;
But now he’s gone another soul to rob.
Another heart to lure and spurn,
Why should I sob?

He did not kiss me when he said good-bye;
I let him go, not asking why,
Nor do I for him sigh;
He’s gone another virgin breast to tear,
He’s gone on other lips to die,
Why should I care?

A Nocturn

Upon the face of darkness beams my soul—
Nearby, behind the curtains of my sight;
And ’round it weary waves of wonder roll—
Sad seas of color o’er dead seas of light:
Here is no Space, no Time—nor day nor night—
Here is the boundless, undiminished Whole—
Here is my soul.

Here is no love that hides beneath its shoal
The sandix that can redden a sea of years;
Here is no lust that lies to Beauty’s mole
And draws from eyes of flint a flood of tears;
Here is no disenchantment and no fears—
No blasted hopes, no jaunty joy, no dole—
Here is my soul.

Now lost in clay and water; now the Whole
Is lost within me: sea and earth and sky
I dismiss from my presence, as I roll
My lids and lo, the lord of night am I.
Into the airless wilderness I fly;
Here is no vain desire, no galling goal—
Here is my soul.

In Eternity, shod with the hoary noul
Of deathless Death—in dim and shimmering shades
Of soilless vales that bosom and cajole
The crystal flowers dropping from cloud-cascades;
Here in the grove of myriad colonnades
Of jet and pearl and amber I now stroll—
Here is my soul.

Saada

Long hast thou suffered, sister of my heart,
Still thou art
Fair to see;
Thy pains thou entertainest with thy song,
But how long
Will this be?

The seasons all have come and gone, my dear,
But thy cheer
Still abides.
I ask which of thy moan or song is best
And thou sayst:
“God decides.”

I feel the ebbing of the undertone
Of thy moan
In thy song;
How long will tears and irony compete
For thee, Sweet,
O, how long?

When wilt thou, Baby dear, with nimble feet,
Run to greet
Me at the door?
When wilt thou, Saada, walk again with me
Near the sea,
As before?

O sister, how I wish to see thee run,
In the sun,
On the sands!
The singing breakers and the smiling beach
To thee reach
Out their hands.

The light of day is longing for thy face
And the grace
Of thy form;
O how I wish to see thee, Noor-ul-Ain
Caught again
In the storm!

Stolen Salvias

O, bleeding blossoms, tell, were my heart there—
There in your bed,
Would that sweet thief that stole you unaware
Have stolen it instead?
Come with me, scarlet salvias, to your home;
We are not late;
Love in the moonlight there again will roam—
There let us wait.
I still remember when one night she crowned
Me with the stars
Plucked from your scarlet sky—she would astound
The kings of Mars.
She then would slay me—wash the face of night
With my bold blood—
Ay, she would show that yours is not as bright
And not as good.
O, scarlet salvias, why should I refuse
When I’m with you?
Why should I chill my lady, if she choose
To steal me too?

Jealousy

The violets their soft, dark lashes part,
While robins serenade them far and near;
But the anemone, with ebon heart
And blood-shot eyes, pretends she does not hear.

The violets invite the nightingale
Whose carols fall in dew upon their bed;
But the hydrangea, as saffron pale,
Holds high above the wall her nodding head.

Beneath the Salvias

Beneath the salvias, where some angel slew
The favors that were granted by his god,
My heart is hidden; let thy feet be shod
With feathers plucked from my wings of crimson hue.
When here again thou might’st be wandering through;
Look not above; I’m breathing in the sod,
A-mindless of the years, ’neath which I’m trod—
Of Spring birds’ song, or shrieks of Winter’s crew.
Here let me sleep, my lady: wake me not;
Here let me gather, hidden from the moon
And the sun, the strength to rise again and see;
No sweeter, dearer, more enchanting spot
Is there for my sick heart; O, not so soon—
Awake me not—O, let me dream of thee.

Gone with the Swallows

Must I convey at last the news to thee?
Must I now mourn the love that lived in me?
Gone with the autumn, with the dying year.
Gone with the kisses that are yet so near!
Gone with the swallows somewhere o’er the sea!
But with the Spring will he again
Return, will he with me remain?
Must I till then, remembering naught,
Forgetting all that love had brought,
Grope in the shadows of the slain?
Must I forget the day
That took my love away,
And all the happy hours
That reared for him their towers
And crowned him with the flowers
Of all the queens of May?
Must I alone
My once my own,
In my retreat
The new year greet,
And winter meet,
And winds hear moan?
Not yet
Can I
Forget;
But why
One clings
And sings
To things
That die?

To the Sonnet

Though cribbed and gyved, thou canst within thy walls
Unfold a wondrous wealth of worlds unseen,
And flood the soul’s abyss with moonlight sheen,
As well as darken passions’ gilded halls;
Thy fourteen outlets are so many falls
From which gush out the prisoned joy, or spleen—
The silvery cascades, or the billows green,
And either a sea of bliss or grief recalls.
Thou goddess of the gems of Fancy’s deep,
Though few thy facets, they reflect the whole
Of inner-self in multi-shaded hues;
Thou art the couch of dreams that never sleep;
Thou art the phoenix of the poet’s soul,
As well the crystal palace of his muse.

The Tomb and the Rose

(After Victor Hugo.)

The Tomb said to the Rose:
O Flower of Love, where goes
Each tear which Dawn upon thy cheeks doth shed?
The Rose said to the Tomb:
What makest in thy gloom
Impenetrable of the countless dead?

Said the Rose: O Tomb, of all these tears,
In my recesses ere the sun appears,
I make a perfume which the gods will prize.
Said the Tomb: O plaintive Flower,
Of every mortal I devour
An angel do I make for Paradise.

Rest

Long have I a word enshrined
And worshipped with a piety blind!
Long have I been seeking Rest
In the East and in the West!
Here and there and everywhere
Have I seen her shadow fair;
But the shadow seems to fade
Like the flowers of yonder glade.
In my lone retreat I sought
Her, but dreams against me fought.
In my nights for her I pray,
But with sleep she stays away.

Foolish is thine effort, vain—
Fruitless, hopeless is thy pain!
With the march of Motion keep,
In thy walk and in thy sleep
Beyond thy finite power it lies
To chain the coursers of the skies.
Even nomads and cells minute
Worlds of unrest constitute.

Rest is no where to be found;
Each to all in suffering bound.
And no power can deliver thee,
Mortal, from activity.
In thy life as in thy death,
In thy heart as in thy breath,
On the earth as in the skies
Restless Motion never dies.
Always raging, always spinning,
Endless and without beginning.

Death, like me, is seeking Rest.
And all the seas are in her quest;
But ah, poor souls, she is beyond
Our grasp; we must go on and on.
No, nor even the grave is free
From the laws that shackle me;
New life from his worms takes wing,
And on his face fresh blossoms spring.

The “Flatiron” and the Ruins of Palmyra

To the Ruins of Palmyra this the “Flatiron” addrest:
“Did you ever in your glory
Dream of looking up to see my crest?”

To the “Flatiron” the Ruins thus replied across the sea:
“We were like thee yesterday.
To-morrow thou wilt like us be.”

It Was All for Him

I strolled upon the Brooklyn Bridge one day,
Beneath the storm;
None but a lad in rags upon the way
I saw;—there on a bench he lay
Heedless of form.

He seemingly was reading what the Shower
Was publishing upon the Bridge and down the Bay;
Yet he was writing, writing at this hour—
Writing in a careless sort of way.

Upon a pad he scribbled and as fast the rain
Retouched, effaced, corrected and revised.
Was he recording Nature’s solemn strain,
Or sketching choristers therein disguised?

Whatever it be, I found myself quite by his side;
My nod and smile he pocketed and wrote again;
“Read me your drizzling stuff,” I said, and he replied:
“I’ve written a check in payment for this shower of rain.”

Repentance

When tears wash tears and soul upon soul leaps,
When clasped in arms of anguish and of pain,
When love beneath the feet of passion creeps,
Ah me, what do we gain?

When we our rosy bower to demons lease,
When Life’s most tender strains by shrieks are slain,
When strife invades our quietude and peace,
Ah me, what do we gain?

When we allow the herbs of hate to sprout,
When weeds of jealousy the lily stain,
When pearls of faith are crushed by stones of doubt,
Ah me, what do we gain?

When night creeps on us in the light of day,
When we nepenthes of good cheer disdain,
When on the throne of courage sits dismay,
Ah me, what do we gain?

When sweetness, goodness, kindness all have died,
When naught but broken, bleeding hearts remain,
When rough-shod o’er our better self we ride,
Ah me, what do we gain?

O, Give Me Strength to Take

Thy love’s as tender as the drooping rose that sadly says to earth:
“No more have I the strength to take what thou giv’st me;”
But unlike her, alas, thy love’s complaint of dearth:
“Thou hast no strength to give what I demand of thee.”

Thy love hath heard the many whispered promises of every soul;
His birth methinks is nigh coeval with the birth of time:
He lives in death throughout the ages, and his goal
Is hidden in the faded flowers from every clime.

His soul is deeper than the sea and deepest caverns in its bed;
’T is higher than the highest sky above our own;
’T is purer than the morning dew a-dripping from the salvias red;
’T is mightier than the four winds, blowing from every zone.

This love hath offered me the keys of all his halls and towers,
And to my heart with clinging kisses he appealed;
But, ah, forgive me God! must I the sweetest flowers
Refuse because they do not grow in Beauty’s field?

Near the Cascades

Hold back thy lips, I pray;
Just let me rest this way;
My soul is in the spray
Arising from the silvery cascades murmuring farewell to the day.

Thy kisses ’neath a sigh
Of mine extinguished lie;
O friend, I choke, I die:
Pray, let me raise my head to see the parting light, the vivid sky,

If every kiss of thine
Is safely kept with mine
For one for whom I pine,
Wouldst thou, contented with the taking, call my love a love divine?

Ay, and for every tear
Thou sheddest when I’m near
I shed a score to hear
Her echo my desire’s sigh, albeit she is not thy peer.

If I were but a reed,
Or but a fern or weed,
This would not be my creed;
But prick thou these cold slips and all the roots of me in heaven will bleed.

Thy burning breath is creeping
All over me; ’t is leaping
Into my bones and sweeping
Their ashes out, up and into mine eyes, alas! the awful reaping.

No longer do I fear,
Nor see, nor feel, nor hear;
No longer am I near;
If thou wilt quench thy flame, kiss now the lips that were to thee so dear.

As well kiss thou the grass
On which I lay, alas!
Like me, thou too wilt pass;
One kiss will turn thy lips to ashes and one tear, thine eyes to glass.

Beneath this hemlock tree
A clod I leave to thee;
But over land and sea
My soul is rising, rising, rising, searching for the gods that be.

But gods have lived, and lied,
And loved, and fell, and died;
And like me too they cried
For mercy at the snow white feet of Beauty’s daughter, Beauty’s bride.

And when from Beauty’s spell
Her soul is free, she’ll dwell
In mine, the storm to quell;
In mine she’ll rise to realms of bliss, or swiftly whirl into the deepest hell.

Onward Keep

Onward keep! Forget the self that cried:
“This world’s a forest choked with ice and snow;
No spark of fire through it can ever ride,
No human flame in it can ever glow.”
And keeping onward, now, I find
The golden leaves of yesterday
All safely hidden from the wind
Beneath the snow that melts away,
And on the shivering boughs
New leaves and tender sprout;
They crown the winter’s brows,
And laugh away his doubt.
And in the brook
The echoes of
What I forsook—
What I did love.
And the frost
’Neath the breath
Of me must
Welcome death;
And the heat
Left behind
Guides the feet
Of the blind.
Onward keep;
Laugh and weep;
Pain and joy
Hide and peep.
Rise and fall—
Fall and rise;
This is all—
This is wise.

Allah wa Ana

Though I’m God, thou art man, we are one,
We are all and we shall ever be;
Though the light of my sky thou didst shun,
Thou shalt love me ere thy course is run,
As forever I live loving thee.

Thou art mine, I am thine and the fire
Of my breath all thy regions shall warm,
Ere the life in thy soil shall expire,
Ere the seeds of thy basest desire
From their prison break out and take form.

Thou wilt doubt and deny me forsooth
And rejoice in thy vanity’s power;
Thou wilt die on the breast of my truth,
In the end thou wilt laugh at thy youth,
And its wine although old will be sour.

I was with thee when thou didst deny,
As I am with thy mother at prayer;
I was with thee when thou didst defy
My hell and my earth and my sky,
And I love none the less those that dare.

In the yogi’s pagoda I am;
In the fire of the magi I was;
To the sons of Abraheem and Sham
And their foes and to thee I undam
All the banks of my veins on the cross.

Through the spheres and the primitive throngs
I came down and I struggled with thee;
Through the ages I sing in thy songs,
But I leave thee to rise on thy wrongs;—
Thou shalt rise and thou shalt live in me.

In Memory of E. M. El-K.

When my parched lips upon thy princely brow,
Placid as tropic mead, as glacier cold,
Imprinted a last farewell, where wert thou—
Where didst thy soul its loveliness unfold?

Can’t be that in some undiscovered sphere
The Muses sing their souls to thine in bliss?
Can’t be that when I kiss thy forehead here
A thousand angels echo there my kiss?

What is this mask, where is the soul, O where.
And from these eyes, O God, where went the light?
My silence cries within me in despair,
My reason’s sinking in this sea of Night.

Esau, I am beside thee now alone,
I dare not weep, I dare not even breathe;
But through the stillness something hither blown
Makes of thine amber locks a golden wreath.

Life flutters in thy hair as in mine eyes;
Death can not choke the breeze that whispers there
A word of hope; beneath my breath will rise
A hair with God eternity to share

The noon and eve of Life thou didst not see,
But in its Dawn thou didst anticipate
What jealous Night would not permit to be,
What pain and suffering never could abate.

Shall I strew on thee faded blossoms, Brother,
Or fiery buds consumed by their own flame,
Or myrrh and myrtle from our Mountain-mother,
Or golden rods that whispered oft thy name?

Or, at the shrine of Liberty and Love,
Where thou didst worship ardently and die,
Shall I now join the gods come from above
With thy sweet songs this shrine to beautify?

Ye sapling-pines of star-kissed Lebanon,
Ye cedars laden with a wealth of years,
Send with the mist of dawn and the rising sun
Your garlands, and your incense, and your tears.

To Abu’l-Ala

In thy melancholy’s pensive Fancy
Wisdom rolled its beauteous stars and moons,
Just as in my riotings of pleasure
Thy lone midnights roll into my noons.

Abu’l-Ala, in thy glorious darkness
Didst thou not remember unborn me?
In thy journey to the farthest planets
Didst thou not a burdened shadow see?

Ay, behind the portals of Saturnus
Secretly the cup to thee I passed;
Long, long after this cup thou returnest
Filled with gems of fancy and recast.

In thy Prison a thousand Yamen weapons
Thou didst forge for the oppressed and weak:
In my attic a thousand Beauty roses
I pluck for thee from a Yankee cheek.

The Towers and the Night

Over the White Way’s flood of light,
Over its sea of fiery flowers,
Arose the voice of the ancient Night
And the youthful Towers:

“O Night of nations passed,” the Towers said,
“One day stood high your monuments, but now
Your highest pyramid must lift its head
To see the lights that crown our City’s brow.”

“But man,” replied the Night, “shall crown the stars
With flowers of thought divine,
And write his name upon a monument
Greater than yours and mine.”

The End and the Beginning

The deed is done, O Kings: the blood is shed:
The sword is broken:—broken, too, the Cross.
But she, the mother eternal of the dead,
Though sorrow-laden, smiles at the loss.

You go down grimed with the blood and smoke of wars;
Your armies scattered and your banners furled;
She comes down covered with the dust of stars,
And gives her life again to build the world.

The Cataclysm

Even through the City of the Dead she passed,
Her sack of Horror’s harvest to refill;
And lo, into the untilled world she cast,
With a million hands, the black seeds of her will.
But in the bone-strewn waste I saw a snail
Crawling out of the socket of a skull,
Exultant still:—
Rising from the universal bane
To thank the rain.

And in the thorny flanks of the river tomb,
Gorged yesteryear with the fruits of fear and doubt
The nations bear when their sinews run out,
I saw the crocus weave her tender bloom
Into the ivy’s tangled hair,
While struggling out of the gloom
To praise the air.

The Cataclysm, passing to her goal,
Turned inside out the pockets of the world,
Not sparing even the altar of the soul,
Which at the cradle of the soul she hurled.
But when at last she fell
Across the sill of hell,
I saw in her incalculable toll
A butterfly,
Winging out of the riddled emblem of God
Toward the sky;—
Rising with the Faith re-won
To serenade the sun.

Reflections

I walked along the countryside
At eventide,
And everywhere
The road was fair
With moons of water here and there,
Into whose heart the grasses spied.
And suddenly upon them shone
The light of the City’s eye,
Reflected from a bulb on high,
Which made them and their shadow one.
Nay, made each moon
A mirror seem
To serve the dream
Of tender blades in bending grace a-swoon.

I walked into the night,
And every abode
Beyond the dark, deserted road
Was a prattle of light.
And I thought of the Eye Unseen
Which sheds its charitable sheen,
Not on our goal,
But on the by-ways of the Soul.

The Song of Siva

’T is Night; all the Sirens are silent,
All the Vultures asleep;
And the horns of the Tempest are stirring
Under the Deep;
’T is Night; all the snow-burdened Mountains
Dream of the Sea,
And down in the Wadi the River
Is calling to me.

’T is Night; all the Caves of the Spirit
Shake with desire,
And the Orient Heaven ’s essaying
Its lances of fire;
They hear, in the stillness that covers
The land and the sea,
The River, in the heart of the Wadi,
Calling to me.

’T is night, but a night of great joyance,
A night of unrest;—
The night of the birth of the spirit
Of the East and the West;
And the Caves and the Mountains are dancing
On the Foam of the Sea,
For the River inundant is calling,
Calling to me.

The Fruits of Death

Said the folded Leaves upon the Heath
To the opening Leaves upon the Tree:
“Soon will the Warders of the Storm
Bring us to our Mother-Sea,
Even as they opened yesternight
Our prison doors of Destiny:
We envy not the Birds now nor the Dew;
To them we leave the Forest and to you.”

The infant Leaves thus made reply:
“But we rejoice that we are here;
We stand in the cerulean Gate
Of Life to crown the dying Year.
Him who emancipates we love,
He who enchains is also dear:
You are the Flowers of the Storm, and we,
We are the Fruits of Death upon Life’s tree.

Constantinople

When Othman’s sword, as Paleologue’s, is broken
And Othman’s gods are smitten to the dust,
And naught remains, not even a rusty token
Of their hierarchal cruelty and lust;—
When church and mosque and synagogue shall be,
Despite the bigot’s cry, the zealot’s prayer,
Unbounded in their bounties all and free
In every heritage divine to share;—
When thou shalt rise, rejoicing in thy loss,
Upon the ruins of a state nefast
To reconcile the Crescent and the Cross
And wash thy hands of thine unholy past;—
When with the faith new-born of East and West,
Which spans the azure heights of man’s desire,
The spirit of thy people, long oppressed,
Is all a-glow with its undying fire;—
When thou thyself, Byzantium, shalt stand
In the minaret of Freedom and thy voice,
Rising above the muazzens in the land,
Bids all the seekers of the light rejoice;—
When in thy heart the flame of freedom sings,
And in thy hand the torch of freedom glows,
And in thy word the sword of freedom rings,
And in thy deed the seed of freedom grows—

Then shall we call thee Mistress of the Morn,
Bride of the Straits, Queen of the Golden Horn.

Andalusia

I

Alcazar

There was a rhapsody in all her moods,
A child-like grace, a passion unrestrained;
Her throne, which bard and saki shared, was stained
With virgin wine as with the blood of feuds;
And in her lyric-woven interludes,
Epitomizing destiny and time,
Her spirit, hid in opalescent rhyme,
The shades of Melancholy still eludes.

Where’er she trod, the rose and bulbul meet;
Where’er she revelled, gardens ever blow;
Where’er she danced, the henna of her feet
Yet lends a lustre to the poppy’s glow;—
Arabia, dark-eyed, light-hearted, fair,
Is but a flower in Andalusia’s hair.

II

Alhambra

Gods of the silence, still remembering
The dying echoes of her lute, bemoan,
In canticles of golden monotone,
Her Orient splendor too soon vanishing;
And while lions guard her courts, grey eagles wing
Around her turquoise domes, and seedlings blown
From distant lands to her hushed fountains cling,
Yea, and the sun himself sits in her throne.

Time, once her vassal, lingers near the streams
That woo the shadows of her crumbling walls,
And, musing of Alhambra’s glory, dreams
Of Elegance and Power in Myrtle Halls;—
Arabia, once counted of the strong,
Is but a sigh in Andalusia’s song.

III

The Mosque

In the bewildering grove of colonnades,
Once brilliant with a flood of saffron light,
Poured from ten thousand lanterns day and night,
Her memory, like spikenard in the glades
Of distant Ind or Yemen, never fades;
And her devotion, though the ages blight
The mystic bloom of her divine delight,
Still casts on alien altars longing shades.

But through the mihrabs which the humble hand
Of genius wrought, o’er marbles hollowed deep
By knees that only Piety could command,
I see Oblivion coming forth to reap;—
Arabia, in Allah’s chaplet strung,
Is but a word on Andalusia’s tongue.

IV

Al-Zahra

Not with the Orient glamor of her pleasures,
Nor with fond rhapsodies of prayer or song
Could she her sovereign reign a day prolong;
Not in the things of beauty that man measures
By the variable humor of his leisures,
Or by the credibilities that change
From faith to fantasy to rumor strange,
Was she the mistress of immortal treasures.

But when the holy shrine Europa sought,
Herself of sin and witchcraft to assoil,
The sovereigns of al-Zahra maxims wrought
And Averroes burned his midnight oil;—
Arabia, the bearer of the light,
Still sparkles in the diadem of Night.

In the Palm Groves of Memphis

The Khamsin1 comes robed in the Lybian sands,
Veiled in the haze of June,
Armed with Sahara’s serpent-wreathed brands,
Shod with the sun and moon;
Swift winging in a cycloramic flame—
Of Typhon born, unseeing and untame—
She comes her reign of terror to proclaim,
While crowning day and night with all the blazonry of tropic noon.

She claps her iridescent wings, and lo!
The rolling heat,
Tremulous, reverberant, a-glow,
Sibilant, fleet,
Sweeps over the land with unabating ire,
Devouring Spring’s heritage entire,
Setting the very pyramids a-fire,
Engulfing even the turtle’s shelter and the turtle-dove’s retreat.

Alas! where are the roses which the prime
Of summer share
With the sesame, the myrtle and the thyme
In meadows fair?
Where is the sacred lotus and the bloom
Of cumin and mimosa, whose perfume
Once filled the shrine of Isis and her tomb?
Where is the pomegranate flower that shone in Cleopatra’s hair?

Where is the riant beauty of the land
Of mystic runes
That decorates its shimmering robes of sand
With emerald moons?
Where are the emerald shelters, desert-bound,
That with the prayer of caravans resound?
Where is the desert trail, the watering ground
That murmurs low of lost oases amidst the fast dissolving dunes?

Where is the caravan that yesternight,
To the merry sound
Of bells, set out of the city of delight
To Nubia bound?
Where is the Nubian caravan that late
Passed heavy-laden through Denderah’s gate,
Speeding to reach the city for the fete,
When gold and silver freely flow, when Allah’s bounties abound?

Where is the crested lark, the golden thrush
Of the sacred grove,
Which made the sensitive accacia blush
And bloom with love?
Where has the bearded bustard fallen? where
Is Ibis, once the pet of Hermes fair,
Nursing his purple wings and his despair?
Where is the red flamingo hiding, where’s the house of the turtle-dove?

Across the welkin, like a shadow cast
Upon a cloud, but one
Undaunted dips his black wings in the blast
And rears anon
His form against the rushing winds; alone
The vulture hovers around the flame-draped throne
Of Death, and over the palms that rock and moan,
Peering through the desolation, staring at the laughing sun.

And Khamsin, in her chariot of fire,
Upon which clings
The moult of her unsatiable desire,
Delirious sings,
And shakes the harvest from her tangled hair—
The sesame seeds, the grasses sere, the tare,
The golden tassels which the rushes wear,
The purple feathers of the ibis and the swallow’s shrivelled wings.

She shakes her booty from her sapphire tresses
In gleeful guile,
As she in passing savagely caresses
The crouching Nile;
While everywhere, within her sight or call,
Along its banks or in its rushes tall,
All things are swooning in her leaden thrall—
Yea, prostrate is the salamander, prostrate is the crocodile.

And when at intervals her madness takes
A sudden turn,
A lull ensues and over Egypt breaks
The sacred urn
Of silence; while to quench her ancient thirst,
Which licked up every running stream and cursed
Every pool in cave or hollow nursed,
She plunges deep into the Nile and wonders why his waters burn.

And wonders too when in the winnowed sands,
Out of the gloom
Of labyrinthine avenues and lands
Of mystic bloom,
Arise the scents of blossoms that have known
Ten thousand Khamsins, and were often blown
To dust ere Menes sat upon his throne—
The blossoms of the teeming depths that float above the crest of doom.

Yea, and in the scattered dust of Ptah,
The flawless gleam
That once shone in the fane of Amen-Ra
Would fain redeem
From darknesses of immemorial time,
Which swallowed Thebes and Memphis in their prime,
The symbol of a heritage sublime,
And light again the sacred temple of the world’s eternal dream.

For though the earth itself should perish in
A flaming pyre,
And the wasting sun should like a spider spin
His cobwebs of fire,
Yet in the serdabs under Khamsin’s feet,
Around the blue of Osiris’s judgment seat,
Is this, which glyphs vermilion repeat:—
The sun of thought, of faith, of God shall never expire, shall never expire.

Albeit, in a mocking gust she veers
Into the gloom
That knows nor time nor sun, nor ever hears
The voice of Doom;
And, rifling the bejewelled gods, she drops
The veil of splendor from her howdah’s tops
And rocks in state from Karnak to Cheops
To tramp the dust of Pharoah’s pride, to smite the phantom of his tomb.

But mocking Khamsin, when her mood is spent,
Lulls the morn
In luscious breezes swooning with the scent
Of love reborn;—
Carressing winds! the tree senescent grows
In you as young as fruitful, and the rose
Upon the bistre lips of Ramesis blows,
Whispering of things immortal to the wandering seed and the reed forlorn.

She passes in phantasmagoric waves
Over shifting dunes,
Through shattered orbs, beyond the barren caves
Of mouldering moons,
While the antique youth the Sun, as young today
As when the cricket first essayed her lay,
Across the flood of Nilus makes his way,
And with him weaves for Egypt wondrous summer garlands and galloons.

And lo, the Khamsin of the world, in flames
Of crimson hue
And clouds of vitriolic dust, proclaims
The era new;
But through the storm a spirit wings his flight
Across the phosphorescent gulfs of night.
And this, upon the rising sun, doth write:—
God liveth, yea, God liveth still and man shall nothing rue.

Prayer in the Desert

O Lord of Bounties, melt thy heaven’s breath,
Which spreads its gold around the head of Death—
Which, while it smiles, devours all living things,
Giving to Desolation wondrous wings:
Lest in the waste Arabia’s star should wane,
A little rain, Allah, a little rain.

Thou Bountiful, thy Sun is weaving fast
The shroud of Earth now in the sand-storm cast;
Earth can not weep—the well of faith is run—
Its rivers and its desert sands are one:
O thou Bestower, once more sustain
Thy sun-crowned Daughter with a little rain.

Quiet this rising phantom-haunted sea
Of sands; the Faithful from its fury free;
Enchain the monsters of the dire simoom—
Let not the desert be thy children’s tomb.
Thou Merciful, assist us to attain
Our goal—a little rain, a little rain!

Arabia’s thousand wounds to thee appeal,
And with our lips its gaping wounds we seal;
Prostrate upon the sands we lift our hearts,
Pierced in thy presence by thy flaming darts.
Thy children, Allah, in the throes of pain,
Pray for a little rain, a little rain!

Water and Flowers

Here are flowers, O my Beloved,
Here are flowers;
Let us lay our hearts today
Among the flowers;
Let us not be led astray
By the mirage far away;
Here is verdure, and in verdure
Love embowers.

Here are springs, O my beloved,
Here are springs;
Let us rest and build a nest
Near the springs;
Let us cease our weary quest
For the mountains of the blest;
Here is water, and in water
Blessing sings.

The Song of Rain

Allah is merciful, Allah is kind,
His heart, in the tears of the earth, is enshrined;
He chains the desire
Of whirlwind and fire:—
The Drought, the Simoon and their forces entire,
In the fast spreading shades of his pity, suspire;—
It rains, it rains.

Allah is gracious, Allah is sweet,
The desert is flowering under his feet;
E’en the fires he fanned,
And the mountains they spanned,
And the caverns that groan under burdens of sand
Are dazed with the bounties that flow from his hand;—
It rains, it rains!

Allah ’s all-seeing, Allah is wise,
The palm from the stone to praise him shall rise;
The deer in the dale,
The plant in the shale,
The bird in the nest, and the gull in the gale
Are joyously chanting, Hail, Allah, hail!
It rains, it rains!

Allah is mighty, Allah is great,
His hands all things resuscitate;
He burns the shroud,
He shakes the cloud,
And the dead of the earth with new life are endowed—
The bones of the earth are joyous and proud;—
It rains, it rains!

The House of Night

Her sable robes the gloaming trails
From golden strand to purple height,
And softly, over the wealds and dales,
Into the vacant House of Night.

But lo, where first her footsteps mark
The sunset’s last extinguished pyre—
Above the hills—a saffron spark,
A gleam of unconjectured fire.

Between the foliaged zone and sky,
Where sentries of the forest stand,
It peeps and flits—a firefly;
It soars and glows—a firebrand.

A sacred flame from hemlock shades,
Rising like a mystic sign
Above the silence of the glades
Into the solitudes divine.

A sign perchance from those who pass
To those who follow in the gloom,
Dancing round a moulten mass
Above the grudging gulfs of doom.

A new-born world, though years untold
Have fed the forge that gave it breath,
Where Life still casts of beaten gold
Cressets for the shrine of Death.

A dying world, though like a gem
Of sapphire hues in nacre bright,
Dropt from the zone or diadem
Of the immortal queen of night.

A world! From depths to heights as dark
It leaps anon into the dance
And whirls away—’t is but a spark
From the anvil of the God of Chance,

But Faith and Fancy often mar
The mystery of things divine;
For that which is a rolling star
Was fluttering neath a lonely pine.

And lo, another orb doth roll
Above the groves where once it trod;
And still another seeks its goal
In the infinities of God.

From where the eagle marks his flight,
Across the void that earth-bound seems,
They twinkle forth, a circle of light,
Around the Gloaming’s couch of dreams.

And thus they first themselves disguise
As glow worms in the gathering gloom,
And suddenly refulgent rise
O’er the abysmal tracks of doom.

For aeons thus, from hill to sea,
Athwart the grudging gulfs they glow;
And waning tell of the worlds that be
And the ghosts of worlds of long ago.

For aeons thus, their torches high,
The gods unseen—as when the light
Of day conceals the starry sky—
Illuminate the House of Night.

After Reading King Lear

Is ’t strange that in the cycle of his woes,
Which shakes his cloud-embosomed peak of years
And shatters the very fountain of his tears,
He seeks the friendly path of winds and snows?
When Villany forgiven more villanous grows,
And Treason in his robes herself attires,
And Love beneath Adultery’s sheet expires,
Is ’t strange that mating with the Storm he goes?

Father and King! in sooth, they know thee well—
The Whirlwind and the Forest and the Night;
But we who in the obscure shelters dwell
Know better of thy sorrow than thy might.
Father and King! thy heritage is vast;
Wherever children be, its seeds are cast.

The Wanderer

I wander among the hills of alien lands
Where Nature her prerogative resigns
To Man; where Comfort in her shack reclines
And all the arts and sciences commands.
But in my soul
The eastern billows roll—
I hear the voices of my native strands.

My lingering eyes, a lonely hemlock fills
With grace and splendor rising manifold;
Beneath her boughs the maples spread their gold
And at her feet, the silver of the rills.
But in my heart
A peasant void of art
Echoes the voices of my native hills.

On every height a studied art confines
All human joy in social pulchritude;
The boxwood frowns where beckoning birches stood,
And where the thrushes carolled Fashion dines.
But through the spreading cheer
The shepherd’s reed I hear
Beneath my Lebanon terebinths and pines.

And though no voices here are heard of toil,
Nor accents least of sorrow, nor the din
Of multitudes, nor even at the Inn
The City is permitted aught to spoil,
Yet in my breast,
A shack at best,
Laments the mother of my native soil.

Even where the sumptuous solitudes deny
A shelter to a bird or butterfly,
As in the humblest dwelling of the dale
A gracious welcome ’s shown the passer-by;
But evermore clear
Allwhere I hear
The calling of my native hut and sky.

Land of my birth! a handful of thy sod
Resuscitates the flower of my faith;
For whatsoever the seer of science sayth,
Thou art the cradle and the tomb of God;
And forever I behold
A vision old
Of Beauty weeping where He once hath trod.

Lebanus

To B. C. R.

O my Love, how long wilt thou continue
Fondly nursing every dreaming Hour!
Our Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his ancient Tower.

In his ancient, cedar-shaded castle,
Night and day, Lebanus sits a-musing
Of the memories that bloom unnoticed
Every season at the feet of Sorrow;—
Musing of the radiant days of Tammuz
That went dancing with the bride of summer
Down the deep and pine-encircled Wadi;—
Musing of the time the Prophets kindled
Sacred fire in Man’s empurpled temples,
Blazing all the highways of the world;—
Musing of the days embattled monarchs
Laid their shields and lances at his feet,
Bowed before his throne invincible.
O my Love, the sad and lonely Cedar,
Ever rocking in her arid splendor,
Ever in penurious shades embosomed,
Reaches out for water in the meadows
And for sunlight in deserted vineyards;—
Rears her hope above the snow eternal
Crowning her Time-hallowed desolation.
O my Love, the crumbling Temple ’s dreaming
Of the star that wanders from its orbit,
Of the rose that blooms and dies forsaken,
Of the leaves that fall from sheltering branches
Only to become the sport of chance winds
Or the bed of some unsightly creeper;—
Dreaming of the Lebanon lily, drooping
In the dells beneath forbidding ridges;—
Dreaming of the corymbs of the elder
That forgot the touch of loving hands,
For the zephyr of the South, which passes
O’er their bloom of tender welcome, only
Fans into a flame the smoldering embers
Of the anguish of departed lovers.
O my Love, the furzes are in full bloom
Waiting on the terrace of Lebanus
For the ardent and enamored seeker—
Waiting, and the secret of their silence
Locked remains within their shells of amber
Till thou comest, till they hear thee whisper,
I am thine and thou art mine forever.

O my Love, how long wilt hither tarry,
Making toys of Time’s discarded hours?
Fair Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his House of Flowers.

And around it wings of song unnumbered,
Amber-tinted, beryline, vermilion,
Pour their riches in the land of mourning,
Strew their silver in the olive grove,
Weave their magic through the almond blossoms,
Shake the incense from the terebinths,
Spread in vain their gladness o’er the pines.
Yea, a sea of Siren witchery,
Like the sundown inundates the heaven,
Rolling o’er a sea of boughs emblossomed,
Multi-hued, a-glow with burning rapture;—
Waves of song are on the scented breezes,
Rolling o’er the virgin snow of Sanneen,
O’er the trackless verdure of the lowland,
O’er the mottled mountains joined forever
In a wild embrace of stony silence;—
Rolling over Wadis fondly nursing
Cyclamens of unremembered seasons,
Oleanders of unfathered beauty,
Irises of mothered tenderness.
Yea, my Love, the robin in the olives
Thrills the very shadow of the branch;
In the pomegranate, thrush and skylark
Fill its crimson cups with flaming rapture;
In the fig tree and the laden vineyard,
Bulbuls chant the joy of harvest-time.
Yea, my Love, the birds of dawn are calling,
Whispering, chattering, warbling everywhere,
Dancing, flitting, waiting in the groves,
Lingering in the chinks of terraces,
Making early visits to their young.
Nay, they’re busy making preparation
For thy coming, longing to behold thee,
Singing meanwhile to the morning star,
Which borrows from thine eyes its radiance,
From thy tresses, all its golden splendor.

O my Love, how long wilt hither tarry,
Wilt dally with the web of Time, how long?
Lone Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his House of Song.

And over it our star is re-appearing!
The star of our own destiny is rising
O’er the mountains of embrace eternal,
O’er the cedars of the sacred faith,
O’er the ruins of the ancient temple,
Flooding them with light of tender pallor
Like the light that lingers in the eyes
Of parted lovers—shaking from the bosom
Of night their shadows, dew-drenched, iris-scented—
Garlanding the messengers of morning
For the coming of the well-loved stranger.
Yea, the Star of Love, the Light supernal,
Before which bowed the world in adoration,
Is re-appearing in the Orient heaven
For thy sake, for thee, O my Belovéd.
Yea, without thee, neither song nor flower
Nor star nor temple of antique Lebanus,
Has aught compelling of the Soul’s devotion.
But with thee, the caves, the naked ridges,
The very rocks betoken the divine.

O my Love, how long wilt hither tarry
Weaving gossamer of day and night?
Sad Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his House of Light.

The Pagan

I walked into her Temple, as of yore
My Tyrian sires, allured by cryptic signs;
But sudden as I entered closed the door
Upon the hope that mortal love resigns
Before her ancient, myrtle-bowered shrines.

I sorrowed not; though every lamp I lit
Flamed up in speech articulate and said,
Beware, O foolish Worshipper! ’t is writ:
“Who craves a gift shall give his soul instead,
Who lights a lamp is curséd of the dead.”

I did not heed; I passed from shrine to shrine,
Filling the lamps with oil, the Fane with light;
But when I approached, O One Eternal, thine,
I heard the terror of her tongue, and Night
Was creeping on her brow of malachite.

I did not stop, although the votive oil
I poured into thine urn to water turned;
But when the Dawn her enchantments came to foil,
The secret of thy clemency I learned—
Again the oil upon thine altar burned.

Then suddenly the Temple shook and swayed,
And all the shrines, except thine, disappeared;
Even so her heart, by knowledge undismayed,
On Love’s one altar with thy hand upreared,
To Love’s one God is evermore endeared.

The Lost Disciple

O Master, I can not adventure with thee;
At the Door of the Dawn, in my lone wandering,
I have broken my staff; for the true dawn is she
Who comes every day with her jar to the spring.

Ay, Master, I tarried last night at the gate
Of her garden, which kisses the Lake Galilee;
She was gathering flowers and fruits for the Fete,
And with tulips and poppies she beckoned to me.

In her lamp there was oil, in my hand there was fire;
In her house cried a voice, “O make haste with the flame!”
On my lips were the names of the daughters of Tyre,
On her breast were the lilies that whispered thy name.

I have dared, O my Master, to envy thy feet,
And to yearn for the love of a Magdalen fair;
I have dreamed that mine, too, in the heart of the street,
Were laved with her own hands and dried with her hair.

O Master, my lips her devotion have stained,
For her soul’s precious ointments were offered too late;
I have lost in the fire of my lust what I gained
In my longing and love for her love and thy fate.

From the Arabic

Why art thou so hushed and sad,
So thin and wan?
Who robbed thee of thy flesh and song—
Was it Ramadhan?

Nay, Ramadhan is not to blame,
For I have ceased to fast and pray;
But to my vacant Dwelling came
An unknown Guest—he came to stay.

And in my heart he eats and drinks;
He drinks my blood, of wines the best,
And eats my burning flesh—ah, yes,
My love for Zahra is that Guest.

She Went Out Singing

She went out singing, and the poppies still
Crowd round her door awaiting her return;
She went out dancing, and the doleful rill
Lingers beneath her walls her news to learn.

Their love is but a seed of what she has sown;
Their grief is but a shadow of my own.

O Tomb, O Tomb! did Zahra’s beauty fade,
Or dost thou still preserve it in thy gloom?
O Tomb, thou art nor firmament nor glade,
Yet in thee shines the moon and lilies bloom.

Hanem

Hanem, we must have met before,
Perhaps a thousand years ago;
I still remember when I tore
Your virgin veil of lunar snow.
By Allah, I remember, too,
When, sousing in my mortal bain,
You bit my lip and said, “Adieu,
When shall we, Syrian, meet again?”

Hanem, thine eyes are brighter far
Than when in mine they shone one day;
I wager every moon and star
The tax of lustre to them pay.
And those who dared with them to jest,
Where are they now?—those lovers slain
Who whispered dying on your breast,
“O Hanem, shall we meet again?”

The victims of your eyes are here,
In pyramids they keep their clay;
And even your sister Flames are near—
They fain would kiss my soul away.
Full many a time from them you bore
This mortal love, this mortal gain;
Remember Nubia’s sable shore—
When shall we, Hanem, meet again?

L’Envoi

Why quickly through the Cairo street?—
Will you return?—Shall I remain?
Fate might not ever the chance repeat;
When shall we, Hanem, meet again?

O Freedom

O Freedom, in thy cause I fought,
For twenty years I fought in vain;
And in my mountain shelter naught
But worthless trophies now remain.
Yet in my heart I hear a cry,
Which never there makes a vain appeal:
I would once more beneath thy sky
Brandish my sharp and shining steel.

How much one stakes upon thy dream,
How much for but thy name we pay;
How cheap the passing ages seem,
When years are given for thy day.
How many still would fight and die
In thine old cause and for thy weal!
I would once more beneath thy sky
Brandish my sharp and shining steel.

The purest love I give away,
The bliss of it I set at naught;
Again I’m on my wayward way
Seeking what I have often sought.
My wounded hopes, my bleeding ties,
No peace inglorious e’er shall heal:
I would once more beneath thy skies
Brandish my sharp and shining steel.

L’Envoi

O Freedom, though thy price be high,
Though one for thee his life must seal,
I would once more beneath thy sky
Brandish my sharp and shining steel.

The Road of Make-Believe

I

She sits upon a rock along the stream
That heard the whisper of her first Desire,
Washing the faded garment of her Dream,
Which she had often carried to the Dyer—
The Dream of her self-centred lyric fire.
And in the flowing, scarlet wounds of Twilight,
Expiring on Aurora’s drooping wings
Beneath the secret scimitar of Night,
She dyes again her garment, while she sings
Of new-born love, though to self-love she clings.

II

He seeks the path of glory in the noon
Of self-intoxication, dreaming still
Of power—wondering why the sun and moon
Are not yoked to the chariot of his will.
His soul, a clinging vine, his mind, an ill,
He beats against the peaks of earth-bound dreams.
Subsisting on the thistles of his heart,
But ever seeking, in the fitful gleams
Of his own fire, self-admiration’s mart
To mend his horn or whet his venomed dart.

III

They walk together in the golden vast
Of vision-haunted, soul-alluring sands.
Beholding the illusions of the past
Among the ruins of deserted lands;—
Together, although neither understands
The groping purpose of the other; and yet,
While in their hearts the gods of conflict nod,
They gloze and smile, dissembling their regret:
Love, on the Road of Make-Believe, they prod,
He going to the dogs and she, to God.

Renunciation

At eventide the Pilgrim came
And knocked at the Belovéd’s door.
“Whose there!” a voice within, “Thy name?”
“ ’T is I,” he said.—“Then knock no more.
As well ask thou a lodging of the sea—
There is no room herein for thee and me.”

The Pilgrim went again his way
And dwelt with Love upon the shore
Of self-oblivion; and one day
He knocked again at the Belovéd’s door.
“Whose there?”—“It is thyself,” he now replied,
And suddenly the door was opened wide.

A Sufi Song

My heart ’s the field I sow for thee,
For thee to water and to reap;
My heart ’s the house I ope for thee,
For thee to air and dust and sweep;
My heart ’s the rug I spread for thee,
For thee to dance or pray or sleep;
My heart ’s the pearls I thread for thee,
For thee to wear or break or keep;
My heart ’s a sack of magic things—
Magic carpets, caps and rings—
To bring thee treasures from afar
And from the Deep.

The Two Brothers2

In the grotto the forest designed,
Where the firefly first dreamed of the sun
And the cricket first chirped to the blind
Zoophyte—in the cave of the mind
We were born and our cradle is one.

We are brothers: together we dwelt
Unknown and unheard and unseen
For aeons; together we felt
The urge of the forces that melt
The rocks into willowy green.

For aeons together we drifted
In the molten abysses of flame,
While the Cycles our heritage sifted
From the vapor and ooze, and uplifted
The image that now bears our name.

I am God: thou art Man: but the light
That mothers the planets, the sea
Of star-dust that roofs every height
Of the Universe, the gulfs of the night—
They are surging in thee as in me.

But out of the Chaos, to lead us,
The Giants that borrow our eyes
And lend us their shoulders, must heed us;—
They yield us their purpose, they deed us
Forever the worlds and the skies.

God of the Distances, Hear Us

I

God of the Distances, hear us—
Hear us and guide us today.
Thy footsteps, though never so near us,
Are lost in the dust of the fray.
Thy high priests, who often have spoken
The word that was heeded, are mute;
Their torch is extinguished; their token
Is distrust and discord and dispute.
God of the Distances, never
Was man, though still fettered, so free
To challenge his star and to sever
Himself from the past and from thee.
But we, though our spirit is broken,
We heed thee again and anon;
We trust thee, O God, though thy token
Be the desert, thy promise, the sun.
Forever the Distances call us—
The Distances veiled of the Dream;
And we come, whatsoever befall us,
Our pledges and thine to redeem.
We come; and though often we altered
Our course at the gates of dismay,
We never looked backward or faltered,
Never regretted our way.
God of the Distances, hear us—
Hear us and guide us today.

II

From the cave of the first Dream we wandered
Through the forests of Fate and of Chance;
And on many an illusion we squandered
The treasures of Faith and Romance.
We fared with the Fairies of noontide,
We roved with the Jinn of the night;
Our high priests we left on the wayside,
Our prophets we lost on the height
Of rebellion recurrent. We passed
Many a temple and shrine,
Where the sherds of old creeds were recast
And traded as tokens divine.
We passed them, forever consoled
And cajoled by the Voice—“ ’T is the way
Of your goal; your forebodings allay.”
But thousands of cycles we told,
Millions of leagues we unrolled,
Heedless of Time and his sway.
God of the visions of old,
Hear us and guide us today.

III

We sailed all the Seas of the Mind,
We rounded the Capes of the Soul,
We crossed all the Channels that roll
Over the dead of our kind.
And on many a beckoning strand,
Furrowed with silvery streams,
We lingered, but lo, in the land
Were the desolate gardens of dreams.—
Onward! the sails of Desire,
Born of the Distances’ fire,
Tattered but ever unfurled,
To worlds undiscovered aspire—
To the life-giving worlds of our world.
Onward! though no signs appear
Where once rose the phares of the Seer
And the Prophet. On, on! to the goal,
Though veiled in the billows that roll
Over Orion.—The fear
Of the Distances never was liege
Of our hearts; but the Mazes besiege
The bridges of Faith on our way.
God of our vision austere,
Hear us and guide us today.

IV

Hear us the Captains of Sorrow—
The tillers of the soil of defeat—
The lights of the oft promised morrow,
Whose false dawns thy promise repeat.
Our name and our purpose are written
In blood on the tablets of Time;
Our spirit, though frequently smitten
To the dust, has arisen, sublime
And triumphant, again and again;
Our torch, though extinguished, was never
Relinquished; our sword and our pen
Are brandished forever and ever.
Yea, the Ideal’s undying desire
And the wreaths of defeat it has won,
Their story, in letters of fire,
Is limned on the brow of the sun.
And not till a new world ’s begotten
Of the womb of our own, will the word
Of the soul of the earth be forgotten,
Or the cry of the earth be unheard.
’T is our word, ’t is our cry, ’t is our yearning,
Which shall mark even the ending of Time;
For no cycle of darkness returning
Shall reach to the path we must climb,
Or efface from our sight the supernal
Beauty of Truth born of Dream.
God of the vision eternal,
We are thine, though in darkness we seem,
But hear us, O hear us today
And help us again to our way.

Badruddin

Seek what you shall e’er possess,
O Badruddin,
Although it be a will-o’-the-wisp
Of the Unseen,
Which you may never behold
Until my suns and satellites are cold.
And in the seeking you shall find
The hidden jewels of the soul and mind;
And every jewel shall reveal
Things divine
Even in a Sufi’s logic wheel,
Yea, even in the lowing kine.
The eyewash, O lone Badruddin, I bring
Is of the first dews of the first-born spring.
Apply it and behold!
Your dog-bitten sandals are transformed into gold;
Your staff, sand-eaten and far-wandering,
Is bursting into foliage, blossoming,
Bearing fruits of wondrous lush and glow;
And underneath the heavy-laden tree
A maid, whose face dispels all human woe,
Is cooking sesame for you and me.
Cast off the garments of the world
And wear the sacred shades,
Whose color of contentment never fades,
And sit beside me with the golden fawn,
Whose name is Eternal Dawn.

O thou Belovéd, every word of thine
Is like a draught of purple wine;
Every syllable
Is like the singing of the bulbul.
More potent are they than the magic lore
Which to the blind the sight restore,
As now to one, who though a pilgrim old,
Is but an infant in the cradle of love.
Yea, O thou incomparably Sweet,
Thy words are to mine eyes a healing kohl,
Musk to my nostrils, balm to my soul,
Strengthening ointments to my feet.
And what, in the stores and treasures of the world,
Is equal unto this?
Wealth and Beauty, Fame and Power,
They are but mirages in the boundless waste
That separates me from thee—for an hour.

Once I tarried at a Well in an Oasis fair
But in the cup I lifted to my lips
I saw the image of thy wrath
And my despair:—
I dashed against a rock the common clay
And hastened away.

Now, O thou Beloved, I come to thee:
With thy beauty drunk and dumb;
Burdened with thy wealth, and lame;
Ushered by thy liveried Fame;
In thy glory garbed I come.
But I tremble at thy threshold lest the thorns in my feet
The story of my sacrifice repeat;
I tremble at thy threshold lest the flowers of my heart
Betray the painted lips of conscious art;
I tremble at thy threshold lest the eyes
That long have sought to behold but once thy face,
Deserve not even thy shadow to embrace.

The Sufi

Lulled in the purple darkness is my soul,
Behind the curtain, Allah, of my sight,
Where recreative waves of wonder roll
From sad seas of color over dead seas of light:—
I close my eyes and lo, the laden Night
Stops at the ivory gate to pay thy toll
To my soul.

And with it Wealth in Destitution’s van,
And power in the chariot of Dole,
And Fame upon the skeleton she stole
From Death, Ambition, too, amidst her clan,
Spurring her jaded nag:—the Caravan
Of Life is at the gate to pay thy toll
To my soul.

They pass: I open my eyes: and as I try
To con the cruel pages of the scroll
Which Censure left in fragments at their goal,
Then suddenly, illumining the sky,
A form of grace and beauty I descry.
’T is Love, O Allah, come to pay thy toll
To my soul.

But once, while lingering in the doleful shades,
Among the fallen, wine-stained colonnades
Of what was once thy temple, where still troll,
With languid step, the spirit of pagan maids,
I saw thee, Allah, coming through the glades
With food of love and from thy scrip I stole
A jasmine for my hungry soul.

The Fugitive

I

I saw Thee following me,
I heard Thee calling me,
I even felt Thine arrows in my tears;
I know Thou art shadowing me,
And wilt yet, forestalling me,
Whip out the vanities of all my years.

I ran and still I run away from Thee
Through maze and mirage of mortality;—
Over the hot sands and the frozen lakes,
Across the sable wilderness that breaks
In fragrant moors, I ran to hills of dreams,
Up to the secret borderland that gleams
Eternally, casting its shafts of light,
From every incommunicable height,
Upon the spinning feet of humankind.
O, how I leaped from peak to peak to find
The path to the azure dance-hall of the world,
Whose dome is gemmed, whose portals are empearled
With hearts that melt and crystallize and shine—
With frozen music, frozen beads of wine—
And whose laughter echoes through the spinning spheres,
Where we were taught to dance in former years.
Yea, I, who lit Thine altar, as a boy,
And nursed in incense fumes my vision of joy,
And like a roebuck leaped across the rills,
And danced like sparks of sunlight o’er the hills,
To be, at early morn and eventide,
The first of acolytes that served with pride
Thy venerable priests, alas! one day,
Casting my shame and piety aside,
I snuffed the candles out and walked away
Into the dazzling night of dance and song,
Into the temple of the merry throng.
And ever since, a fugitive from Thee,
Shod with Thy lightning, chuckling oft with glee,
Unburdened and unfettered and undaunted,
With naught, not e’en my shamelessness to hide,
And only by beguiling Beauty haunted,
I trod the path of demiurgic pride.
Yea, I was proud, when in the dawn’s desire
I could command the fruit of every tree,
The bloom of every garden, and the fire
Of every passion, every ecstacy
Upon my way. O pride of brawn and dare!
I’d shake the lustre from the stars and steal
The sap from the vines of June, and I would share
My booty with the comrade that would seal
His thieving faith with paeons to the deed
That knows nor law, nor moral code, nor creed.

II

I ran and still I run away from Thee,
Past pyramids and labyrinths of reason,
Through gleaming forests, where the upas tree
Feeds both the saint and sinner for a season.
And I danced in its lethal shades; I climbed
Up to the highest fruit-concealing bough
That bends beneath a mocking wing; I rhymed
My joy and pride; and o’er the very brow
Of Death I leaped into the howling void,
Where the acrobats of Mind, with balance-pole
Of Logic in their hands, are ever employed
In scanning the dark canyons of the Soul.
And I was proud when on the tight rope I
Essayed my feet and fixed my giddy brain
Upon the universe; whereat the sky
Was but a mute infinity of vain
Belief; and every mystery divine,
A sea-washed, iridescent hollow shell
Upon the sands of faith: yea, every sign
Upon the road led to an empty well.
And I was proud—O pride of intellect!—
That the nothingness of things I could detect.

III

I ran and still I run away from Thee,
Mistaking Thy compassion for Thine ire;—
A rebel I, fantastically free,
A green-eyed flame of crepitating fire
Whipped by the winds of Circumstance, and yet
By Thee pursued and by Thy love beset.
And why?—I oft pretend to know not why
This fond solicitude. For what am I
But a bubble of vanity, a human thing
Puffed with the vision of a loneliness
In which a pimpled Ego tries to sing
Of Self, alas! and spread its ebon wing.
But I remember still Thy first caress,
Which, in my infant vision I could feel
Even as the flowers, which Thy love reveal,
Even as the ocean in the Moon’s embrace,
Even as the sunrise that reflects Thy face.
And this remembering, I hailed the soul,
Flaunting the sacred symbol of the goal
That shrines Thine image; yea, and I was proud
That, rising over Self Thyself to find,
With Thine own godliness I was endowed,
And yet I am but partially resigned. …
O, spiritual pride! which would disguise
The hollow heart of Holier-than-thou
In accents borrowed from the meek and wise,
I, too, have prated with a placid brow,
Though I, still casting shadows in the mire,
Was but a scarecrow in the vineyard of desire.

I saw Thee following me,
I heard Thee calling me,
I even felt Thine arrows in my tears;
I know Thou art shadowing me,
And wilt yet, forestalling me,
Whip out the vanities of all my years.

A Chant of Mystics

I

From the Mist of Arcana we rise,
Through the Universe of Secrets we come,
And we enter the Tavern as Lovers,
Whose features are pale as the false dawn,
Whose statures are lean as the new moon.
Like unto a jar is the body,
And the soul in the jar
Is the silvery voice of the Fountain,
Is the rose-scented breath of the Mountain,

For your sake we have come
In the shape of a jar from the Sea;
For your sake we have come as Disgrace,
But glory incarnate are we.
For the sake of the world we dance
O’er the flame, on the point of the lance.
O, think us not mortal, for we
Are the light on the foam of the sea.

Of a truth, we are kin to the sun,
The infinite source of all splendors;
We are one
With the world’s riddles and wonders.
But not of the world nor the sun is the breath
That lingers awhile in the regions of Death.
The dust on our sandals betrays us, we know—
We have travelled afar our devotion to show
To him who is waiting for us at the gate
Of the Garden of Union our longing to sate.

We shall interpret the Truth,
We shall the Secret unveil;
For naked we come, like the dew,
Like the zephyr, we come, and the gale:
Naked, through thorn-bush and grass,
We speak and we pass.
Our garments were burned in the fire of the Mind,
In the world where the Deaf still dispute with the Blind.

We are the Truth,
And into the world
From the Universe of Secrets we’re hurled.
We are are the Truth,
And into the skies
From the Mists of Arcana we rise.

II

In the light of the day, in the stars of the night we behold
The face of the Master, the feet of the Pilgrim of old;
In the sigh of the wind and the voice of the thunder we hear
The plaint of the bard and the rhapsodic chant of the seer.
Without them, alas, we are dumb,
Though not deaf to the flute and the drum.
But the vision is true,
Allahu, Allahu!
They are garbed in blue,
Allahu, Allahu!
They are drenched with dew,
Allahu, Allahu!

Hail, Sana’i3 the Moon of the Soul,
The Guide and the Road to the goal.
Hail, Attar4 the Vezier of Birds,
Who sing in his musk-scented words.
Hail, Arabi,5 the Tongue of the Truth,
The Eye of the Prophet, in sooth.
Hail, Rabi’a,6 the Heart of the Sphere,
Beloved of the bard and the seer;
The Rosebud that rises to greet
The splendor beneath Allah’s feet.
Hail, Gazzali,7 the Weaver of Light,
The maker of wings for the flight.
Hail, Hallaj,8 the Diver divine,
Whose pearls decorate every shrine,
Whose blood was the pledge that his words,
I am Truth, shall fore’er be a sign.
To Jelal’ud-Din Rumi,9 all hail!
The Master who flung every veil
To the wind, who ne’er sober was seen,
Though ne’er to the tavern had been;
But ever—and often alone—
Was dancing before Allah’s throne.
Hail, Tabrizi,10 who nourished the Bard
With jasmine and myrtle and nard;—
Who loafed and invited his soul
And would not write a word in his Scroll.
Hail, Fared,11 the love-stricken one,
The heart of the rhapsodic Sun;
The soul of the Vineyard, the Press
That knew every vineyard’s caress:
The host of the Tavern divine—
The Saki, the Cup, and the Wine.

The vision is true,
Allahu, Allahu!
They are garbed in blue,
Allahu, Allahu.
They are drenched with dew,
Allahu, Allahu!

And casting the years from their folds and the shame
From their bosoms, they leap in the circle of flame;
They leap, with a flash of their limbs, to the dance
In the tender caress of the Beautiful’s glance.
For only in rapture the face of Belovéd is seen
Through the mask of the spheres and the veils of existence terrene;
And only the slaves of Devotion and Love have the feet
That dare to approach the enravishing glow of the Screen.
Yea, hither we come as the flame of his rapturous fire,
And to the music of rebec and flute, in the dance, we expire.

III

Yea, Man is as near the Belovéd
As far from the world he may be;
He is full of the beauty of Allah
As he’s void of the Thou and the Me.
Life and the world we abandon
That the Life of the world we may see.
O, come to the assembly of Lovers
In the shade of the Tuba tree.
O, come to the Banquet of Union
And taste of the ecstasy.
O, come to the Tavern where nectar
And wine are a-flow as the sea.
For only the drunken are sober,
And only the fettered are free.

Like the waves of the ocean we rise and we melt into foam
That the Moon’s caravan might carry us back to our home.
Likes the motes in the sun-beam we dance in the dawn’s disarray
That the sun might preserve us awhile from dust and decay;
But the atoms of being, the motes in the Sun of his Love,
Are aflame with desire to be where no night is nor day.

Like a child in the cradle whose mother must rock it to sleep,
We rock to and fro that the child of our heart might be still;
Like the lonely palm, when the whirlwinds over it sweep,
We sigh and we chafe in our chains, and we bow to his will.

Like the bird in the cage who pecks at his sugar and sings,
So we, in the Cage of the world, to quiet our wings.
But the vulgar will say that the dance of the palm ’s to the wind,
And the bird to the sugar is singing—Alas! for the blind!
We come for their sake in the shape of a jar from the Sea;
We are filled with the water that heals; and though sealed, we are free.

Nor Crescent nor Cross we adore;
Nor Budha nor Christ we implore;
Nor Muslem nor Jew we abhor:
We are free.

We are not of Iran or of Ind,
We are not of Arabia or Sind:
We are free.

We are not of the East or the West;
No boundaries exist in our breast:
We are free.

We are not made of dust or of dew;
We are not of the earth or the blue:
We are free.

We are not wrought of fire or of foam;
Nor the sun nor the sea is our home;
Nor the angel our kin nor the gnome:
We are free.

Yea, beyond all the moons and the suns and the stars, in a place
Where no shadow of horizon is, nor of darkness a trace,
Where the Garden of God is a-bloom on Love’s radiant strand,
There is our temple, our home, and our own native land.
Yea, body and soul to the world and the sun do we give,
And in the First Soul—the Soul of Belovéd—eternally live.

IV

Awake, O ye Pilgrims, awake!
O Lovers, arise and prepare!
The drum of departure we hear;
The Driver is come for the fare.
The camels are ready; their bells
Are decking with silver the air.
Awake, O ye Pilgrims, awake!
O Lovers, arise and prepare!

The nightingale sings on the branch
To wake up the blossoms; the creek
Whispers a word to the fern,
Who follows, his favor to seek;
The tulip is begging to go
With the zephyr who kisses her cheek;
The face of the Mist is a-glow,
For Dawn mounts the Minaret to speak:
Open the road is, and safe;
No gates and no sentries are there;
Awake, O ye Pilgrims, awake!
O Lovers, arise and prepare!

Each moment a spirit is sent
With a message of mystery sealed;
Each moment a spirit goes forth
That the mystery might be revealed.
And whenever the Dawn opes his eyes,
A blind one on the wayfare is healed;
Whenever a Lover appears,
The Night drops her star-studded shield;
Whenever a Lover is slain,
Blooms a flower in the world’s barley field.
And always the pangs of departure
Are wrought into torches that flare.
Awake, O ye Pilgrims, awake!
O Lovers, arise and prepare.

Ere the saki was born, ere the vineyard existed,
The cup, bright and brimful, enchanted our eyne;
Ere the tavern was built, we revelled and trysted
With the loved One and drank to his beauty divine.
We drink till we wander away from Self and Desire—
We drink till in drunkenness we, on his bosom, expire.

We have known long ago all the raptures of madness;
All the raptures of burning from childhood we know;
In our soul is the soul of the Mother of gladness;
In our heart is the heart of the Father of woe.
Transported and smitten, we wander with ne’er a complaint;
Our story entrances the sinner, enraptures the saint.

Transported and smitten and drunk, we are thought to be mad;
Self-abandoned, unity-seeking, we’re the puzzle of fools;
For the madman’s madness is varied in art, and the sad
Piety-monger tickles his heart while he drools.
O, mind not the strings of our robe, they were loosed in the revel;—
They snapped when we drank with the saint and danced with the devil.

There is nothing that we would conceal in the seeking;
Our love is the sun and our passion its flame;
To dance-hall or tavern, we come not a-sneaking;
For the right and the wrong of the world are the same.
And if you are a seeker, the blood of Hypocrisy shed;
Nor be trammeled by Shame—take a poniard and cut off her head.

For your sake we have come
In the shape of a jar from the Sea;
For your sake we have come as Disgrace.
But glory incarnate are we.
O think us not mortal, for we
Are the light on the foam of the sea.

Still higher our rank, though we come
With the flute and the drum.
In the veils of the world do we come
With the flute and the drum.
As vigilant warders we come
With the flute and the drum.
To call you to the Tavern we come
With the flute and the drum.

V

Perchance in our sleep we become unaware
Of the circumstance strange of our birth;
Perchance a hair
Divides the heaven and the earth.
But whether two worlds or a hundred, the loved One is all;
Only One do we seek, only One do we know,
Only One do we hear, do we see, do we call.
We come as the heroes and slaves of the Mighty, the Dear;
We come as the mind and the soul of the violet Sphere.

What place have your meat and your bread
Where we were first born, and first fed
Through our eye and our ear?
And now, without eyes we can see,
Without tongues we can speak,
Without ears we can hear.
And when the clouds and the storms of the Mind
Darken and shut out the skies,
We kindle the torch of the Heart,
Which we give to the mighty and wise.

For the heart is the bird of a world made holy by song;
’T is the love-lorn and love-guided bulbul the owls among.
And when it wings all exultant its way over mountain and moor,
It dreads nor the depths nor the heights nor the transcending lure.

The heart is a treasure of gold in the dust-pit of things;
’T is the rebec of love and of love forever it sings;
’T is the pearl in the sea and the phare on the shore of the Mind;
’T is the ear of the deaf and the all-seeing eye of the blind.

The heart is the maker of dreams, the alembic of power:
’T is the gate to all beauty, the key to the ivory tower;
’T is the crown of the Budha, the Christ, ’t is the sword of the Prophet;
’T the flame in the temple of faith, and of reason, the flower.

The heart is the last star that leaves in the wake of the Night,
And the first star that ushers Aurora’s pageant of light;
’T is the first and the last ray of hope, the salvation of man;
’T is our guide and our standard—the leader of our caravan.

Hearken! the voice of our leader
In the dawn’s stillness and glow:
Allahu, Allahu! We’re ready!
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

The hour of departure is come,
The caravan ’s moving. Woh ho!
We are bound for a country of wonder,
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

Wherever we stop on the way
Is a feast for the heart, and a show;
Everywhere, too, is a tavern,
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

He who has led us thus far
Will lead us still further, we know:
He opens to us every gate—
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

He is the magnet and we
Are but pieces of steel: woh ho!
Earthward the Magnet is moving!—
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

Sweet scents from the curl of his tresses
Are a-float on the breezes that blow
From the radiant peaks of the world:—
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

As we fix our amorous gaze
Upon him more amorous we grow:
He moves in a soul-witching maze:—
Sight-seeing with us, who will go?

Come! but come empty of purse and empty of hand;
Who travel with us shall not hunger or thirst, nor shall need;
For the stores of the Master are open in every land,
And his Stewards, the Earth and the Sun, his wishes exceed.

He is our need,
Our staff and our creed;
Of our hope and despair,
He’s the Sun and the Seed.

Come, but come empty of heart and empty of mind;
Who travel with us shall not carry a thought or a care;
For they who all things abandon, everything find,
And they who are drawn to the loved One, escape every snare.

He is our care,
Our goal and our snare;
Of our grief and our joy,
The bequeather and heir.

VI

Grape-juice must ferment in the jar,
Ere it turns into wine;
So the heart, in the jar of Desire,
To sparkle and shine.
Like the face of the mirror that ’s clear
Of image and form,
So the heart must be free e’en of shadows
To reflect the divine.
O Brothers, our words are the petals
Of the rose that eternally blooms
In the thornless rose-bush of the Soul,
Which his image assumes.
O Brothers, our word is the truth,
Our standard the guide;
No Sufis are speaking, but he
In whom all things abide.
Yea, his parrots are we, sugar-chewing
And repeating his words evermore,
While the habitants rude of the world
Camel-like thistles devour.

Sugar-chewing we come for your sake;
Awake, O ye Pilgrims, awake!
The cypress that once graced the grove,
Is a-float on the river of Love.

O Lovers, the Veil of the Secret he rends,
And like light drops of water, he gently descends.
He walks on the face of the turbulent sea,
Driving before him the waves to their lee;
Like a shepherd he calls, and his flock turned to foam,
Scurries and scampers, impatient for home.
A moment, alas! When his face is revealed,
All the wounds of the world are miraculously healed.
A moment, alas! When his light disappears,
The world is submerged in an ocean of tears.

We are the light that is spun
For the firefly and the sun;
We are the thread in the pearls
Of the sea and the tear.

Make use of our pearls, and our foam, and our fire;
For your sake we have come as Disgrace from the Sea;—
For your sake we have come in the flesh of Desire,
But glory and beauty incarnate are we.
We are the flowers in his Garden, the lights in his Hall,
The sign on his Portal, but he, he is all—he is all!

The banquet, the host, and the guest—
The seeker, the sought, and the quest—
All three,
Is he.
The given, the taker, the giver—
Love, the beloved, the lover—
All three,
Is he.

And we, to rejoin him, like torrents, escape through the hills;
No fetters, no walls can restrain us, no welfare, no ills.

Hope is sighing,
Faith is crying,
Creeds are dying—
Allah, Allah!

A clap of thunder
Rents asunder
Man’s little Wonder—
Allah, Allah!

Idols tumble
In a jumble,
Temples crumble—
Allah, Allah!

Flames are sweeping;
Priests are reaping;
Kings are weeping—
Allah, Allah!

Ashes cumber
Flame and ember,
Who remember—
Allah, Allah!

Night is crawling,
Stars are falling,
Souls are calling—
Allah, Allah!

Orbs are winging,
Fire-bringing,
And of him singing—
Allah, Allah!

Clove and nard, in
His first garden.
Wait his pardon—
Allah, Allah!

Every flower
In his bower
Is Love’s dower—
Allah, Allah!

His compassion
And his passion
Are our fashion—
Allah, Allah!

Whirl, whirl, whirl,
Till the world is the size of a pearl.
Dance, dance, dance,
Till the world ’s like the point of a lance.
Soar, soar, soar,
Till the world is no more.

Endnotes

1. A dry wind from the Sahara that prevails in Egypt about fifty days. Hence its name—Khamsin.

2. I have tried to embody in these stanzas the idea, shared partly by the Sufi, that God and the Universe are one.

3. Famous Sufi poet of Persia.

4. Famous Sufi poet of Persia.

5. Sufi philosopher and poet of Arabia.

6. Famous Sufi poet of Persia.

7. Sufi philosopher and poet of Arabia.

8. Sufi philosopher and poet of Arabia.

9. Famous Sufi poet of Persia.

10. Famous Sufi poet of Persia.

11. The foremost Sufi poet of Arabia.

Colophon

Poetry
was compiled from poems published between 1905 and 1921 by
Ameen Rihani.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Weijia Cheng,
and is based on transcriptions from
various sources
and on digital scans from
various sources.

The cover page is adapted from
Circassian Cavalry Awaiting Their Commanding Officer at the Door of a Byzantine Monument; Memory of the Orient,
a painting completed in 1880 by
Alberto Pasini.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

This edition was released on
March 10, 2024, 6:54 p.m.
and is based on
revision 0c2b548.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
May 22, 2023, 5:17 p.m.
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Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

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