Young Adventure | Page 7

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 no speck Blotted the clear expanse, and the full moon Rose in much light, and all night long I saw Her ordered progress, till, in midmost heaven, There came a terrible silence, and the mice Crept to their holes, the crickets did not chirp, All the small night-sounds stopped -- and clear pure light Rippled like silk over the universe, Most cold and bleak; and yet my heart beat fast, Waiting until the stillness broke. I know not For what I waited -- something very great -- I dared not look up to the sky for fear A brittle crackling should clash suddenly Against the quiet, and a black line creep Across the sky, and widen like a mouth, Until the broken heavens streamed apart, Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires, Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God. I lay there, a black blot upon a shield Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held Until I staggered up and cried aloud, And then it seemed that something far too great For knowledge,