Voices and visions / by Clinton Scollard [electronic text]

OUT OF THE ORIENT

AT THE DESERT'S MARGE

I CAN still recall, though the lapse is long Since that spectral hour of even-song, How the sun from the desert sky-line made The pyramids cast a wedge of shade Toward the tawny river, and how the moon, Over the minarets peering soon, Flung the segment of shadow back, Long and peaked and purple-black, While the Sphinx, inscrutable, brooded by, And the gaunt bats gathered momently, Swooping and circling here and there, Like evil dreams, in the haunted air; And a great flamingo, winged in flight, A giant rose in the gloaming light.

I still can hear from far aloof, Drifting out from a wattled roof And a blistered clay wall bare and mean, The cheerless chant of the fellaheen,— A medley of shrilly barbarous bars Jangling and jostling up to the stars.

I still can catch, divinely blent, The clove and citron and jasmine scent From the distant gardens and orchards blown Out to the marge of the desert zone;

And still can feel about me cast The clutching spell of the veiled and vast And never-fathomèd wide sand sea,— Its ancient magic and mystery.

Here might the flower of wonder ope,— The mystical lotus-bloom of Hope,— Showing a calyx where, opal-wise, Glisten the dews of Paradise. Here might the dreams that the Prophet knew,— Marvel and miracle,— come true;The genii-guarded gates of Doom Rise from their infinite depths of gloom; Heaven descend, and its portals swing Back with ethereal cadencing, And a voice of more than mortal breath Whisper the secret of life and death.

LEBANON

IMMEMORIAL cedar groves; Valleys where the shepherd roves; Peaks of purple; cinnabar Slopes, and fields where poppies are, Each a little mimic sun, And at night the matchless star Leaning over Lebanon!

Vast horizons; shattered shrines; Terraces that verdant vines, Arbor linking arbor, drape,— Where the sleek skins of the grape Yield the ichor of the sun; Taste, and who would fain escape Out of golden Lebanon?

Far above, its crest aglow, Hermon filleted with snow; Far below, the Tyrian sea, A great turquoise, dreamily Turning topaz in the sun; Soul and sense you hold in fee, O alluring Lebanon!

To have seen you, evermore Means to yearningly deplore Life where paler glories fret With remembrance and regret; Ah, to linger where the sun,— Allah's shield exalted set,— Shines o'er lovely Lebanon!

BALLAD OF ACHMED PASHA

He thought him wise,—Achmed Pasha,— And he merrily laughed — "ha! ha! ha! ha!"

ACHMED PASHA was a doughty man, The ruler of every class and clan Where sparkling Barada rippled and ran,— Barada, called by the Greeks of old Chrysorrhoas, the stream of gold.And he swore one night on the steps that led To the tomb of Saladin — valiant dead! — "By the Prophet's beard," was the oath he made, "Ere the closing day of the Ramadan Shall the cursèd Christian dogs be flayed!"

Then through the streets from gate to gate Crept, like a venomous snake, the word; And when the ears of the rabble heard, There was sound of the sharpening scimitar Under the sun and under the star; Arab, Turkoman, Druse and Kurd, How they looked alert, and laughed elate A hungry laugh,— "ha! ha;"— O a wily man was Achmed Pasha!

The citron bloom, like the foam of the sea, Tossed in the south wind snowily, And he whispered, sunk in his deep divan,

"This very night shall the flaying be!" While through a myriad tones and tints, — Prismy glamours and rainbow glints,— Without the fount in the courtyard ran.

From alley dim and from portal black, From sinuous lane and from cul-de-sac, Unmasked Murder stole, and the night, As far as Lebanon's purple height, Heard the tumult that grew and grew As the frenzied Moslems sacked and slew. And when the sanguine torch of the dawn Out of the east o'er the desert shone, Damascus streets showed a deeper dye Than that which gleamed in the morning sky; And down from his casement-sill —"ha! ha! The dogs are flayed!" laughed Achmed Pasha.

Then over the crest of Lebanon, And the sapphire waves of the inland main, Did an awful rumor rise and run Of thousands, aye, upon thousands slain To the lilt of a laugh. Did he dream (ha! ha!) Of what he had roused, Achmed Pasha? Ye may cuff the cur, ye may scorn and spurn, But there comes a day when the dog will turn!

So there gathered a fleet that into the east Sailed and sailed till the Syrian line Of serried mountain peaks increased, The palm up-climbing to meet the pine. Then rank upon rank of shimmering steel Swept the passes of Lebanon, And down on the city dazed with sun And slaughter the vengeful legion bore, Nor paused in their onward swing and wheel Till they grounded arms at the palace door Where the Pasha cowered and shivered. Aha, What a sorry sight was Achmed Pasha!

They reared them a gallows stanch and high Beneath the cope of the Syrian sky; And they haled him forth from his soft divan, This wise (or was he a foolish) man! And that he might have some scope for glee They gathered a little company Of his boon companions,—two or three; And then, at a sign,— "ha! ha! ha! ha!" They made an end of Achmed Pasha.

The tale has a moral, I'd fain attest,— A saying as fair as the goodliest,— That the man who laughs the last laughs best.

AN ORIENTAL SUNRISE

OUT of the desert the sun Leaps, and the night is done; Forth from the almond close A song aspires, and the rose Raises its radiant head, While the prismy dews are shed From the slim papyrus reeds Where the singing water speeds. Each sand-grain seems a speck Of gold, and the snowy neck Of the dove into silver gleams Where the slender minaret dreams Toward the vault, of a sudden dyed With a sapphire glorified. Hark, there's a stir in the khans! And the tented caravans,— Crouching camels and men,— Are smitten to life again!Toward the holy Kaaba now Do the prayer-lipped Faithful bow, Lifting their orisons; Then a rumor rises and runs,— Presage of din and jars,— Through all of the long bazaars. Jasmined lattices ope To the golden wings of Hope;

The shadows throng no more, For the amber lights have play; And forth from his unbarred door Love looks out on the day.

IN GADARA

DO you recall, sweet, how the spring Came up the glade of Gadara, With bourgeoning and blossoming As in the gardens of the Shah,— How morning from her gold-bright wing Flushed height and depth in Gadara?

How all the poppy beacons flared, And every rathe anemone; How all the lovely lupins shared The heaven's turquoise clarity,—And blush-fair oleanders dared Their banners toss,— a rosy sea?

And, sweet, do you remember, too, The bird voice in the carob bough,— Some magic minstrel hid from view,Vow lifting after lyric vow?— A troubadour who knew the clue To ope love's heart-gate,— when and how?

Blithe, very blithe, the world seemed then, — (O golden day in Gadara!)The sky that leaned above the glen So like your eyes that wooed me; ah, Would we might live it o'er again, That day of days in Gadara!

DAY LILIES

YOUR delicate perfume In the twilight-shadowed room Takes me back to an hour In the land of the lotus flower, With the lotus moon at bloom.

From a lone papyrus isle In the gloam of the middle Nile A reed-flute's slender strain, Like a haunting heart refrain, Faltered and swelled the while.

The desert stretched away, A symphony in gray, From the marge of the ancient streamWhere the dark genii of dream Dwell for aye and a day.

Then a little wind there came Wrought of the sun's clear flame And the night's cool breath, and bore A waft from an unknown shore Of a sweetness without name.

Elusive as a sigh, As the soul's ecstatic cry At the tremulous touch of love, It hovered about, above, Then passed like a phantom by.

Passed; but it comes again Over the murk of the main, Back through the waste of years, The joy glints and the tears, The passion and the pain.

Trifles,— how oft they start The gates of the past apart,— Just a hint of perfumeIn the twilight-shadowed room Stirring the chords of the heart!

A DESERT NIGHT

LET us stray a little, you and I, Under the vast immensity That is dome to Allah's mosque, the sky!

The myraid stars seem to sway and swing Like cressets, ring upon radiant ring, Now glowing and now vanishing.

Silence girdles us, save for the bark Of jackals haunting the outer dark Where a Bedouin's camp-fire shows its spark.

Yonder sleep in the shielding khan That shelters our way-worn caravan,— Horse and camel and woman and man.

They are happy with trance and dream, And we with waking, and that one theme That lovers will love till the sun's last gleam.

Azrael and Israfel, All the genii of heaven and hell, What are they when love's tale's to tell?

Naught! — for the world-old night-wind saith Out of the void, with its lute-like breath Love is lord over Time and Death!

THE KHAN

THERE is a ruined khan by Gennesar, The sapphire-bosomed lake of Galilee, Wherein aforetime many a company Found rest and food the while they journeyed far. Upon it now look Syrian sun and star, And in its roofless rooms and courtyard see Only the jackal prowling stealthily Where briars and vines in noisome meshes are.

Some hearts there are that harbored high desires (Goodly the company that met therein,— Yearning for truth that evermore aspires, The burning hope, the faith that dares to win) That have been choked by vice's vines and briars Amidst which crept the slinking jackal, Sin!

BY HASBAN'S MARGE

THERE is a lime by Hasban's marge Ancient of days and lordly large, And when within the Syrian sky The bright sun burns like Allah's targe, It's O beneath the boughs to lie, Unheeding how fleet time foots by!

Thus lay I at the prime of noon; The mountain breezes were aswoon, Aswoon the lyrics of the tree,— Its leafy laughter low of tune; And in the red anemoneHushed was the burden of the bee.

And one soft stirred the zither strings Whose voice was like the Jordan springs, Whose cheeks revealed the sunset glow That shows upon the rose that flings Its petals to the winds that blow At twilight-tide o'er Jericho.

She sang of love, and in her eyes, Lo, its eternal-tender dyes! She sang, and in her trancing tone, Lo, all love's deepest ecstasies Borne adown almond alleys lone In some far paradisal zone!

There is a lime by Hasban; fain Am I beneath its boughs again To dream the dream that maid and man Dreamed to love's rapturous refrain When through the veins youth's ardors ran That golden noontide Syrian!

BY BARADA

BY Barada the bloom is on the bough,— Almond, pomegranate, citron, nectarine, Soft rose and snow amid the emerald sheen; And when the moon-barque shows its silver prow Faint in the east, the bulbul lifts its vow O'er all the lovely leafage, and the green Outreach of mead to where the gaunt cliffs lean,— Grim Lebanon, with the ice upon its brow.

By Barada there is a ruined shrine Sacred to Love, whereto, meseems, the bird Offers its music, word on golden word;— Sweet, though the shrine be shattered by the shore, Love's flame will shine, a beacon-light divine, Triumphant and unquenched forevermore!

FLAMINGOES

O'ER the undulant emerald reach of rushes, Where the waters of old Nilus pour, Tinted as with rosy sunrise flushes, Silent wing they toward the Libyan shore.

Types they are of mystery and wonder, As all else within this hoary land,— Pyramid and pylon rent asunder, And the tawny, ever-shifting sand.

Radiant, remote and sense-evading, They are like a dream o'er which we joyed, Flashing on the vision and then fading In the golden-blue Egyptian void.

THE ZITHER PLAYER

I STRAYED at sunset through Jerusalem, And, as I wandered, a declining ray Lingered upon a golden hyssop spray Until it shimmered like a wondrous gem. Reaching to pluck the blossom from its stem, I was held spell-bound by the zither play Of one beyond the crannied barrier gray Whereof this flower was the sole anadem.

'Twas but a plaintive minor, yet compressed Within the strains there throbbed the soul of grief, A touch intangible that told of tears; It was as though the spirit found relief Through music, pouring from an anguished breast The sorrow of innumerable years.

HASSAN AND HASSOUN

SAID Hassan to Hassoun: "'Twere a boon If this love that enfolds us as fire, This dream of delight and desire, That is torture at midnight and noon, Should lapse, should forever be laid In sepulture, a shadowless shade, Like a lifeless and lusterless moon," Said Hassan to Hassoun.

Said Hassoun to Hassan: "You would ban All our days and our ways with a gloom Like the outermost regions of Doom! We should dwell in one long Ramadan, A fast with no feasting for aye, And beauty and bloom plucked away, And only a desert to scan," Said Hassoun to Hassan.

Said Hassan to Hassoun:"'Tis a tune That tricks us, this love, that allures, Till a frenzy engrips us no cures May allay, for all bird-voices croon, And the winds and the waves alike frame One lyrically maddening name,

A very device of Mahoun," Said Hassan to Hassoun.

Said Hassoun to Hassan: "'Tis a plan That Allah has shaped to uplift From the silt and the shard and the drift The spirit we christen as 'man;' Through it do our eyes first behold What the word of the Prophet foretold,— Paradise,— for 'twas there love began," Said Hassoun to Hassan.

Thus Hassan and Hassoun! — Like a rune You may hear them run on and run on, Blithe Youth and Old Age that is wan, Disputing from midnight till noon. While each speaks, so solemn, his part, What is love but the same in the heart, Outlasting, an infinite span, Both Hassoun and Hassan!

A DRAGOMAN

(Egypt)

I STILL can see him, lean and languid-eyed; Beneath his fez his clear cut features dun With the swart touch of the Egyptian sun; A trifle stooped, yet with a hint of pride; I still can hear his soft voice like the tide Of Nile at nightfall when the stars have won Their immemorial places, and begun Their march across the desert, waste and wide.

I still can feel about him the strange spell That dominates his land, a kindredship With all inscrutable and ancient things, And fancy, if he would, that he might tell The secrets of the Sphinx's sealèd lip And of the pyramids and mummied kings.

KHALID ALI'S PRAYER

In Lebanon, beneath the cedar shade, Amid the fragments of a shattered shrine, For his soul's ease young Khalid Ali prayed To her whom men aforetime held divine.

O THOU that art my boon and bane, At dawn and at the daylight's wane, Look down upon thy worshiper With pity for his pain!

A radiant, unplucked rose I know, Fairer than that of Jericho, Than any attared blossom where The Pharpar's waters flow;

Yea, than the rarest-petaled bloom Of Araby's oasis-loom; Than any crimson bud that decks The fanes of old Fayûm.

I have a tiny garden-space,— Meseems it is an empty place; Ah, how my heart yearns there to see This rose's peerless face!

Grant me the guerdon of this sight, O lovely Lady of Delight, And thine the myrtle-wreaths shall be, And every ancient rite!

Allah will pardon me, for his The rose's fragrant molding is; 'Twas he who shaped her eyes to hold A dream of ecstasies;

'Twas he who wrought from foam and fire Her lips,— a vision of desire! — Work thou this wonder, goddess, lest Thy devotee expire!

In Lebanon, beneath the cedar shade, Amid the fragments of a shattered shrine, Thus, for his soul's ease, Khalid Ali prayed To her whom men aforetime held divine.

THE MERCHANT

(Damascus)

HIS eyes are like twin placid pools, by night O'er-shadowed, yet with glints of starlight there; His voice is winning as the evening air, Wooing the rose in gardens of delight; His smile is like a ray flashed on the sight In some grim place that suddenly seems fair; His thin hands move among the fabrics rare As deftly as a woman's, and as light.

He shows you scarfs and shawls from far Cashmere, And rugs of Kermanshah with velvet pile And sheen of satin shimmering in the sun; And should you dare to designate them "dear," What splendid indignation! Such the wile Whereby his aim (likewise your gold) is won!

THE MEADS OF BESSIMA

Once again to see them, ah, Matchless meads of Bessima!

BY fleet waters glancing golden, Girdled as with dream they lie, Where, by stainless skies beholden, They are stainless as the sky.

For while night, by Allah's guiding, Sows the blue with shimmering flowers, Here the day, through his confiding, Buildeth radiant blossom bowers.

Out of all the tints of morning,— Sunrise arras,—are they made; And they have for their adorning Arabesques of shine and shade.

Spicy asphodelian attars O'er them hover, and the breeze A divine nepenthe scatters From the poppy-chalices.

Here would I a House of Pleasure Rear, like fabled Kubla Khan; Love should be my chiefest treasure,— Love beyond the ken of man.

At my doorway, on his zither Should the gay cicada play; And the bee should bear me thither His full bass for virelay.

Wafted through the open lattice, There should falter, there should float, All the prisoned passion that is Cornpassed in the bulbul's note.

I should know,— fond vision this is! — Biding, Rose of Love, with you, All the Prophet's promised blisses At the bourn of Dreams-Come-True!