Narrative Poems, part 5, Among Hill etc | Page 9

his feet,

Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far land
Where Tagus shatters
on the salt sea-sand
The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth

And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth.
The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid
Its topmost boughs
against the balustrade,
Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines

That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs
Of Delhi or Umritsir,
twined in stone;
And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown
The
day's hard burden, sat from care apart,
And let the quiet steal into his
heart
From the still hour. Below him Agra slept,
By the long light
of sunset overswept
The river flowing through a level land,
By
mango-groves and banks of yellow sand,
Skirted with lime and
orange, gay kiosks,
Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques,
Fair
pleasure-gardens, with their flowering trees
Relieved against the
mournful cypresses;
And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,

The marble wonder of some holy dome
Hung a white moonrise over
the still wood,
Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.
Silent the monarch gazed, until the night
Swift-falling hid the city
from his sight;
Then to the woman at his feet he said
"Tell me, O

Miriam, something thou hast read
In childhood of the Master of thy
faith,
Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith
'He was a true
apostle, yea, a Word
And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.'

Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know
By what thou art, O
dearest, it is so.
As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays,
The
sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise."
Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sort
She cherished in the
Moslem's liberal court
The sweet traditions of a Christian child;

And, through her life of sense, the undefiled
And chaste ideal of the
sinless One
Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,--
The sad,
reproachful look of pity, born
Of love that hath no part in wrath or
scorn,)
Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell
Of the
all-loving Christ, and what befell
When the fierce zealots, thirsting
for her blood,
Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood.
How,
when his searching answer pierced within
Each heart, and touched
the secret of its sin,
And her accusers fled his face before,
He bade
the poor one go and sin no more.
And Akbar said, after a moment's
thought,
"Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;
Woe unto him
who judges and forgets
What hidden evil his own heart besets!

Something of this large charity I find
In all the sects that sever human
kind;
I would to Allah that their lives agreed
More nearly with the
lesson of their creed!
Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray
By
wind and water power, and love to say
'He who forgiveth not shall,
unforgiven,
Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even
Spare the
black gnat that stings them, vex my ears
With the poor hates and
jealousies and fears
Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce
priest

Of thy own people, (be his heart increased
By Allah's love!)
his black robes smelling yet
Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met

Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street
The saying of his prophet
true and sweet,--
'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'"
But, next day, so it chanced, as night began
To fall, a murmur

through the hareem ran
That one, recalling in her dusky face
The
full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race
Known as the blameless
Ethiops of Greek song,
Plotting to do her royal master wrong,

Watching, reproachful of the lingering light,
The evening shadows
deepen for her flight,
Love-guided, to her home in a far land,
Now
waited death at the great Shah's command.
Shapely as that dark
princess for whose smile
A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile

Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes
The passion and the
languor of her skies,
The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet
Of her
stern lord: "O king, if it be meet,
And for thy honor's sake," she said,
"that I,
Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,
I will not
tax thy mercy to forgive.
Easier it is to die than to outlive
All that
life gave me,--him whose wrong of thee
Was but the outcome of his
love for me,
Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade
Of
templed Axum, side by side we played.
Stolen from his arms, my
lover followed me
Through weary seasons over land and sea;
And
two days since, sitting disconsolate
Within the shadow of the hareem
gate,
Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,
Down from the lattice
of the balcony
Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung
In the
old music of his native tongue.
He knew my voice, for love is quick
of ear,
Answering in song.
This night he waited near
To fly with me. The fault was mine alone

He knew thee not, he did but seek his own;
Who, in the very shadow
of thy throne,
Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art,
Greatest
and best of men, and in her heart
Grateful to tears for favor
undeserved,

Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved

From her young love. He looked into my eyes,
He heard my voice,
and could not otherwise
Than he hath done; yet, save one wild
embrace
When first we stood together