Lyrics of the dawn / by Clinton Scollard [electronic text]

At the Tomb of Abel

IN the fair bloom-burst of the Syrian spring, As Allah's buckler, the irradiant sun, Behind the crest of Anti-Lebanon In majesty was slowly westering, Through oleanders and through tangled thyme By a sharp slope we set our feet to climb To where, so runs the ancient Arab tale, Cumbered with centuries of dust and grime, Hangs Abel's tomb above the mountain vale.

We waded poppy shallows; saw the breeze Make sanguine waves of the anemones; And in the faint green orchard aisles below Beheld the almonds spraying into snow; And ever, as we rose, descried afar Peaks, hued with violet and cinnabar And purple, — dyes imperial for dower; Now did the lovely lupin lure, and then Were we enraptured by the cyclamen That from some cranny thrust its fragile flower.

So up and up we clambered, and the air Grew amethystine, like the wondrous wine Crushed from Zantean grapes in vineyards where They blush above the blue Aegean brine. Forgot was every hyssop-saffroned shrine, — The riot of the roses of Fayûm, The revel of the Jordan's pleachèd greens, The glamoured gardens of the Damascenes, Amid this lavish opulence of bloom. And still went with us from the tuneful throat Of Barada the ear-enthralling note The olden Greeks called golden; while the groves About it flung along our tortuous trail The heavenly voice that through the gloaming roves,— The seraph song-speech of the nightingale.

At last we won to steps deep-hewn in stone, Eaten by lichens, and by moss o'ergrown; And, having scaled the topmost, saw a small Dome-fragment pendant from a topling wall Draped with fantastic relics,—cloths whose stain Was bleached by burning suns and dimmed by rain. Beneath the wall a melancholy mass Of ruin lay, sparse-sown with wilding grass Wherethrough the lizards rustled, changing hue With every shift of shape; now steely blue;

Now ashen as an ancient olive bole; Now, in the sun-flame, glowing like a coal.

Anigh the tomb in silence we reclined, While from the west a wafture of soft wind Caressed us soothingly: afar, below; In gathering gloaming spread the green plateau Wherefrom we had ascended. Though our mood Had been elation, soon the solitude,— The thought of the first tragedy of earth,— Banished our buoyance. Then a note of mirth Rose as a bird-song rises when the dawn Bursts into blossom, and the night is gone. And 'neath us o'er the flower-besprinkled space A youth strode, lilting with alluring grace An Arab ditty such as wooers breathe When Love's clear planet, at the shut of eve, Across the wastes of desert flings its spell, And maidens gather round about the well.

He seemed a part of the year's bourgeoning; Human, yet having all that makes the spring Take hold on the affections;—blithesomeness, Beauty of form that through his shepherd's dress Shone, and a vigor in his step and swing Faun-like and passional. His cloak hung free; One bare arm timed a ditty's dips and stops, Waving a crook wherewith, half dreamily,

He swinged the grasses and the blossom-tops. And so we watched him through the closing shade, Along the pathway dipping toward the glade Pass whitherward his grazing flock had strayed, E'en as did Abel long aforetime, fain Of all life's rapture, ere the stroke of Cain.

Cain!—on our minds again, despite the song, There fell the shadow of the world's first wrong; And lo, the while we marked the perfect poise Of that elastic figure,—very joy's Embodiment and portraiture,— our gaze Was horror-smitten, deadened to a daze, For we beheld a dark form, leopard-like, (Grim murder, lurking in a copse's maze,) Behind the shepherd crouch, and spring and strike! The song that soared ecstatic to the sky Turned, on the instant, to a strangled cry. The braided bough-crests at the valley's verge Gaped, and then mingled in a crashing surge Of shuddering leafage, while the copse again Shut from our sight the treacherous son of Cain.

Then sudden dipped the sun, and, clutched by gloom, Downward we plunged from Abel's crumbling tomb.