Young Adventure | Page 7

though thou
plucked the stars from out the sky, Each lovely one would be a
withered shame -- Each thou couldst find or name -- To this
fire-hearted beauty!" Wearily
The genie heard. A slow smile came like dawn Over his face. "Thy task
is done!" he said. A whirlwind roared, smoke shattered, he was gone;
And, like a sudden horn, The moon shone clear, no longer smoked and
red.
They passed into the boat. The gold oars beat Loudly, then fainter,
fainter, till at last Only the quiet waters barely moved Along the
whispering sand -- till all the vast Expanse of sea began to shake with
heat, And morning brought soft airs, by sailors loved.
And after? . . . Well . . . The shop-bell clangs! Who comes? Quinine -- I
pour the little bitter grains Out upon blue, glazed squares of paper. So.
And all the dusk I shall sit here alone, With many powers in my hands
-- ah, see How the blurred labels run on the old jars! Opium -- and a
cruel and sleepy scent, The harsh taste of white poppies; India -- The
writhing woods a-crawl with monstrous life, Save where the deodars
are set like spears, And a calm pool is mirrored ebony; Opium -- brown
and warm and slender-breasted She rises, shaking off the cool black

water, And twisting up her hair, that ripples down, A torrent of black
water, to her feet; How the drops sparkle in the moonlight! Once I
made a rhyme about it, singing softly:
Over Damascus every star Keeps his unchanging course and cold, The
dark weighs like an iron bar, The intense and pallid night is old, Dim
the moon's scimitar.
Still the lamps blaze within those halls, Where poppies heap the marble
vats For girls to tread; the thick air palls; And shadows hang like evil
bats About the scented walls.
The girls are many, and they sing; Their white feet fall like flakes of
snow, Making a ceaseless murmuring -- Whispers of love, dead long
ago, And dear, forgotten Spring.
One alone sings not. Tiredly She sees the white blooms crushed, and
smells The heavy scent. They chatter: "See! White Zira thinks of
nothing else But the morn's jollity --
"Then Haroun takes her!" But she dreams, Unhearing, of a certain field
Of poppies, cut by many streams, Like lines across a round Turk shield,
Where now the hot sun gleams.
The field whereon they walked that day, And splendor filled her body
up, And his; and then the trampled clay, And slow smoke climbing the
sky's cup From where the village lay.
And after -- much ache of the wrists, Where the cords irked her -- till
she came, The price of many amethysts, Hither. And now the ultimate
shame Blew trumpet in the lists.
And so she trod the poppies there, Remembering other poppies, too,
And did not seem to see or care. Without, the first gray drops of dew
Sweetened the trembling air.
She trod the poppies. Hours passed Until she slept at length -- and Time
Dragged his slow sickle. When at last She woke, the moon shone,
bright as rime, And night's tide rolled on fast.
She moaned once, knowing everything; Then, bitterer than death, she
found The soft handmaidens, in a ring, Come to anoint her, all around,
That she might please the king.
Opium -- and the odor dies away, Leaving the air yet heavy -- cassia --
myrrh -- Bitter and splendid. See, the poisons come, Trooping in squat
green vials, blazoned red With grinning skulls: strychnine, a pallid dust
Of tiny grains, like bones ground fine; and next The muddy green of

arsenic, all livid, Likest the face of one long dead -- they creep Along
the dusty shelf like deadly beetles, Whose fangs are carved with
runnels, that the blood May run down easily to the blind mouth That
snaps and gapes; and high above them there, My master's pride, a
cobwebbed, yellow pot Of honey from Mount Hybla. Do the bees Still
moan among the low sweet purple clover, Endlessly many? Still in
deep-hushed woods, When the incredible silver of the moon Comes
like a living wind through sleep-bowed branches, Still steal dark shapes
from the enchanted glens, Which yet are purple with high dreams, and
still Fronting that quiet and eternal shield Which is much more than
Peace, does there still stand One sharp black shadow -- and the short,
smooth horns Are clear against that disk? O great Diana! I, I have
praised thee, yet I do not know What moves my mind so strangely,
save that once I lay all night upon a thymy hill, And watched the slow
clouds pass like heaped-up foam Across blue marble, till at last