Sweet, sumptuous fables of Baghdad The splendours of your court recall, The torches of a Thousand Nights Blaze through a single festival; And Saki-singers down the streets, Pour for us, in a stream divine, From goblets of your love-ghazals The rapture of your Sufi wine.
Prince, where your radiant cities smile, Grim hills their sombre vigils keep, Your ancient forests hoard and hold The legends of their centuried sleep; Your birds of peace white-pinioned float O'er ruined fort and storied plain, Your faithful stewards sleepless guard The harvests of your gold and grain.
God give you joy, God give you grace To shield the truth and smite the wrong, To honour Virtue, Valour, Worth.To cherish faith and foster song.So may the lustre of your days Outshine the deeds Firdusi sung, Your name within a nation's prayer, Your music on a nation's tongue.
LEILI
The serpents are asleep among the poppies, The fireflies light the soundless panther's way To tangled paths where shy gazelles are straying, And parrot-plumes outshine the dying day.O soft! the lotus-buds upon thestream Are stirring like sweet maidens when they dream.
A caste-mark on the azure brows of Heaven, The golden moon burns sacred, solemn, bright The winds are dancing in the forest-temple, And swooning at the holy feet of Night.Hush! in the silence mystic voices sing And make the gods their incense-offering.
IN THE FOREST
Here, O my heart, let us burn the dear dreams that are dead, Here in this wood let us fashion a funeral pyre Of fallen white petals and leaves that are mellow and red, Here let us burn them in noon's flaming torches of fire.
We are weary, my heart, we are weary, so long we have borne The heavy loved burden of dreams that are dead, let us rest, Let us scatter their ashes away, for a while let us mourn; We will rest, O my heart, till the shadows are gray in the west.
But soon we must rise, O my heart, we must wander again Into the war of the world and the strife of the throng; Let us rise, O my heart, let us gather the dreams that remain, We will conquer the sorrow of life with the sorrow of song.
PAST AND FUTURE
THE NEW HATH COME AND NOW THE OLD RETIRES: And sothe past becomes a mountain-cell, Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell In consecrated calm, forgotten yet Of the keen heart that hastens to forget Old longings in fulfilling new desires.
And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense Expectancy and anguish of suspense, On the dim chamber-threshold...lo! he sees Like a strange, fated bride as yet unknown, His timid future shrinking there alone, Beneath her marriage-veil of mysteries.
LIFE
Children, ye have not lived, to you it seems Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams, Or carnival of careless joys that leap About your hearts like billows on the deep In flames of amber and of amethyst.
Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist Till some resistless hour shall rise and move Your hearts to wake and hunger after love, And thirst with passionate longing for the things That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings.
Till ye have battled with great grief and fears, And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years, Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife, Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.
THE POET'S LOVE-SONG
In noon-tide hours, O Love, secure and strong,I need thee not; mad dreams are mine to bindThe world to my desire, and hold the wind A voiceless captive to my conquering song.I need thee not, I am content with these:Keep silence in thy soul, beyond the seas!
But in the desolate hour of midnight, whenAn ecstasy of starry silence sleepsOn the still mountains and the soundless deeps, And my soul hungers for thy voice, O then,Love, like the magic of wild melodies,Let thy soul answer mine across the seas.
TO THE GOD OF PAIN
Unwilling priestess in thy cruel fane, Long hast thou held me, pitiless god of Pain, Bound to thy worship by reluctant vows, My tired breast girt with suffering, and my brows Anointed with perpetual weariness.Long have I borne thy service, through the stress Of rigorous years, sad days and slumberless nights, Performing thine inexorable rites.
For thy dark altars, balm nor milk nor rice, But mine own soul thou'stta'en for sacrifice: All the rich honey of my youth's desire, And all the sweet oils from my crushed life drawn, And all my flower-like dreams and gem-like fire Of hopes up-leaping like the light of dawn.
I have no more to give, all that was mine Is laid, a wrested tribute, at thy shrine; Let me depart, for my whole soul is wrung, And all my cheerless orisons are sung; Let me depart, with faint limbs let me creep To some dim shade and sink me down to sleep.
THE SONG OF PRINCESS ZEB-UN-NISSA IN PRAISE OF HER OWN BEAUTY(From the Persian)
When from my cheek I lift my veil, The roses turn with envy pale, And from their pierced hearts, rich with pain, Send forth their fragrance like a wail.
Or if perchance one perfumed tress Be lowered to the wind's caress, The honeyed hyacinths complain, And languish in a sweet distress.
And, when I pause, still groves among, (Such loveliness is mine) a throng Of nightingales awake and strain Their souls into a quivering song.
INDIAN DANCERS
Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms aflaming withfire Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens that glimmer around them in fountains of light; O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music that cleaveth the stars like a wail of desire, And beautiful dancers with houri-like faces bewitch the voluptuous watches of night.
The scents of red roses and sandalwood flutter and die in the maze of their gem-tangled hair, And smiles are entwining like magical ser- pents the poppies of lips that are opiate- sweet; Their glittering garments of purple are burn- ing like tremulous dawns in the quiver- ing air, And exquisite, subtle and slow are the tinkle and tread of their rhythmical, slumber- soft feet.
