University of Virginia Library

Canto 3

So West the East and East the West allured,
For to his Western eyes and colder blood
She wore a shimmering charm which English maids
Lacked; moving all too slowly, without grace.
Beside, she had a sweet variety
Of swiftly changing mood from smiles to tears,
From tears to smiles, a true yet fickle way.
At times she seemed the vision of the East
Made flesh; of gold beginnings of the world,
Where first the sun sprang and the seas uplit.
And all that feminine uncertainty,
So that he never knew from hour to hour
How he should find her, both perplexed and pleased.
There was no dullness in that intercourse,
Which is the death of western marriages;
Where, all the fire died out, the married sit
In hopeless silence, or with solemn words
Eke out the hapless evening: blessed perhaps
With riches and substantial toys of life;
Yet on the gleaming silver they avert
Their looks, and since together most alone.
The music of her feet was as a dance
Perpetual, and her voice as from the stars,
Not hallowed, yet from finer regions come.
After our staider virgins she allured
His heart, his very sense, and as she moved
In Eastern pity for a western wound,
She seemed to move as an immortal shape,
Sent down from the great skies to tend his hurt.
If then this Eastern maiden had such power
Upon the prostrate soldier; yet had he
No less attraction for the Eastern maid.
Shattered was all her life for sake of him;
To her wild eyes his slower strength appealed
As shadow against burning peril, or
As cool protection and as guidance sure.
His measured words were full of deep advice
And of a colder wisdom than she heard
From the bronzed fiery children of her clime;
His fair hair and his blue and Saxon eyes,
Were things most strange and novel to her gaze.
Then too that he was wounded in fierce fight
Caught at her woman's heart; that he was young,
That in a hundred jousts of violent arms
He by the clear admission of his foes
Had flinched not once, but where the peril was
Had ever there been found; for courage then
As still, will fire a woman to a man.
And he being simple and she subtler far
Wove a still firmer bond between the two.
For she would laugh out at his artless speech.
Though he so much had seen, she so much less,
She in her inexperience was more wise
And in her woman instinct grasped at truths
Which to the world-worn soldier were denied.
He like a child was taught the great world's love,
Even by a girl imprisoned as a child,
Excluded from all converse by the rule
Of the fanatic race with whom she dwelt.
Yet held so close, and veiled, invisible,
Her learned soul in silence she maintained,
Her maiden heart of passion was compact,
Her virgin body knew the secret thrills
Of midnight or of twilight or of dawn.
Then too the strangeness of that far-off land
From which he came, the mystery of the West
Set her adream and foreign cities charmed;
She heard the great sea beat but on his speed,
She saw the long wave foam but in his voice,
And the hoarse beach but echoed in his tongue,
The ocean in his memories came to her.
Most of that city London whence he roved
She grew to think, the high and narrow streets,
The merchants and the warriors and the knights.
And “London,” “London,” to herself would say
As though some talisman against a hurt.
These things, the growing passion of these two
The Emir regarded not: on many an eve,
When the intolerable sun was down,
He would to question and to conference
His prisoner draw, his prisoner now a guest,
Made free of that huge castle so that he
Might wander where he would no question asked.
And to that fierce and silent Eastern mind
Came no suspicion of his daughter's thought.
There would she live till he in his good time
Found for her hand a suitor of her race.
Had he suspected all that growing fire,
His dagger on young Gilbert's heart had been,
His dagger in his daughter's bosom plunged.
No friendship, and no filial love had stayed
The shiv'ring blow; but he, while these two burned
Each for the other with a flame more strong,
As any sun lent to that flame a torch,
Paced to and fro unconscious, deaf and blind.
And yet more lingered she about his room,
Moving this thing or that to give excuse
For all the tarrying, and could hardly draw
Her eyes away from him as she at last
Departed silent; and he evermore
Followed with luminous glance her every step.