University of Virginia Library

Esmeh, the favorite wife of Shah-Zarar,
Ruled her great lord, at Ispahan, by love.
The gardens of her palace, jasper-walled,
Hung towering with their bloomful terraces
O'er lands whose proud sweep, while she gazed on them,
Made her thrice queen. No rival shared her home,
Where lengths of gallery, each like some new dawn
For brilliance, linked their luxuries of pomp.
Her eunuchs blazed with gems; her dancing-girls,
Daughters of Egypt, swarthy as its wastes,
Daughters of Greece, white as its temples are,
Daughters of Syria, lissome as its palms,
Daughters of India, mystic as its gods,
Daughters of Nubia, black and eyed with fire,
All chosen as flowers of grace among their kind,
Flattered by measures wove with fantasy
The languors of her couch at noon or eve.
That poet allowed sweet chief in all the realm,
Whom Saadi and Hafiz would have crowned to-day,
Whose verse dense marts would swarm from booths to list,
Sang for her sole delight his lays of power.
Georgian had been her birth, of royal kin;
Her beauty, a marvel ere the child grew maid,
Was borne on breeze of rumor to the King;
Who, when he heard the story of it, grew wroth,
And saying, “I weary of these rosy lies
That greed of place coins thick to tempt my note,—
By Allah, I laugh at this one,” clad the theme
In fear that struck his boldest courtier mute.

Still, months being flown, his Vizier dared, one day,
To set the girl among a timorous group
Of new-bought slaves; and when the veils were drawn
From various faces and Esmeh's looked forth,
Winsome, unparalleled for virgin bloom,
The King, half doubtful if 't were ghost or flesh
He gazed on, cried with awe, “What maid is this?”
Then, learning her true lineage, from his robe
He loosed a diamond of great price, and sunk
Its glory amid her dusk of hair, and bade
The ceremonial of their spousals haste,
And clear through seven fond years, from then till now,
Clave to his new choice with unfaltering love.

Broad were the lands by Shah-Zarar's dead sires
Bequeathed him, justly governed, knit with ties
Of fealty, and on every still frontier,
From Smyrna to the Indus, freed of war.
Such peace had fallen his people that the king,
Joyed at their thrift and bounty, might have paid
In gloomier hours but momentary heed
To tidings that now vexed his mood with spleen.
For now a certain sorceress, witch or sprite,
Named Dara, but whose actual race none knew,
Had wrought, in near or distant towns, 't was told,
Black spells on caliph, pasha, prince, emir,
By tricks of dance, till some went mad for love
And others died of it as from a plague.
Yet none could snare the beauteous woman-curse,
Who boldly pushed her presence where she willed,
Melting, if seized, in fumes of lurid smoke
That stung her captors' hands to leave them void.
In each new city it was her whim to choose,
Promptly this Dara would claim courtesy
Of him who reigned there. Such demand refused,
She passed in scorn beyond the gates once more,
Crying out, “I am but woman, yet your chief
Has fear lest Dara should unveil her face
And dance before him! Valiant is your chief,
By Allah and all the prophets! May he meet
His foes with equal nerve, should need arise!
Nor let him brand me sorceress, for such plea
Will help him ill; I am leagued with no dark imps;
I am woman, only woman, though my shield
From violence be a gift of magic source.
Who fears me fears himself; who meets me fair
And falls, hath fallen alone by his own lack
Of temperance, wisdom, bravery, chastity,
And all that should in men mean manlihood ...
Go tell your chief how Dara scorns him! Go!”

Herewith her form, close-vestured in its veil,
Would speed from sight, and what she had hurled in scoff,
With all the subtlety of challenge there,
Re-told to grandees who had flouted her,
Bred ire and shame, till heads of other towns,
Eager to prove their strength against her lures,
Flung back the doors of palaces to greet
Her coming; but the witchery of her dance
Would follow, and death or madness be its price.

Girt by the surety of his peerless love,
Such tales in Shah-Zarar could wake alone
Contempt for those whom Dara's blights had harmed.
And when at last he learned that she had fared
In calm audacity to Ispahan,
Soliciting his own imperial heed,
“Throw wide the gates,” he ordered. “Bid her seek
Our audience-hall to-morrow. Lodge her well,
And charge her that she use, to trap our sense,
Her most voluptuous deviltries of dance.
We mean to test her necromancies all,
And tax their baleful cunning till it wane.
We never yet fell thrall to woman born,
Save one, the loveliest, purest now on earth.
Let this deft jade who boasts that she can play
On what is beast in man till man turn beast,
Feel her own boast grow ashes on her lips! ...
To-morrow at noon we wait her. We have said.”

Ere yet the slaves had lit the scented lamps
Between the porphyry columns looming dark
Where dim pavilions died in flowery courts,
That evening, while the west was one sad rose
Pierced with one lambent star, the enamoured King
Sat with Esmeh and told her of his plan;
And she, remembering all the vaunted spells
Of Dara, this famed sorceress, wound both arms,
White bonds of passion, round her lord, and prayed
Retraction of his perilous resolve.
While so she prayed, the rich night of her eyes
Burned on his own and beamed through tears unshed
Entreaty and pathos. “O my lord and love,”
She pleaded, “who that lives will ever hold
Thy greatness at a loftier worth than I?
Yet even a king like Shah-Zarar is man,
And she, this temptress, may in frailty store
Bane fit for demons, like some thread of snake
That scarce will stir the ferns wherefrom it slides,
Yet fells the unheeding lion! O my liege,
Seek thou not proof that heights of good are thine
Beyond her deeps of ill, for this all know;
But shouldst thou match thy strength with hers, 't will be
The valor of virtue hurling honest blows
At slippery guile that fights by craft alone!”

Listening, the King looked pity allied with love,
And answered: “O Esmeh, my dew-bathed rose,
Truly thou wouldst not make me jeer for slaves!
I have sworn to front this pest until it shrink
In swoon of impotence from what its fangs
Would maim and slay. My sanctity of oath
Must bide inviolate, though your suppliance
Were wistfuller than yonder twilight star
That drops reluctant from the damask west.
Ask all my turquoise-quarries; bid me drape
Your doors with rarer broideries from Cashmere,
Carpet your bath-brinks with new tiger-skins
Fresh from Mazanderân, fetch choicer furs
To glad you from chill slopes of Astrakhân,
From Turkestân bring gaudier tapestries,
Hang in your ears more pearls from hot Ceylon,—
But seek not to assuage in me the zeal
For this my task of high example, shown
Through reign of spirit above debasing clay.
For if I fail toward whom all eyes are turned
As light of guidance, wherefore should I hope
Those multitudes of lives that hail me head
Would find not in my ignominy excuse
For thrice ten thousand sins more gross than mine? ...
But O my heaven of womanhood made earth,
My sweet idolatry, my Esmeh, rest sure
That Allah, who in thee forestalls my bliss
Of Paradise hereafter, will not soil
A love as holy as ours with stain so foul—
Nor let my soul, for even a transient hour,
Swerve from its deathless constancy to thine!”

So the king spoke; and Esmeh bowed her head,
Weeping ... But on the morrow Dara danced
In the great hall where Shah-Zarar sat throned.

Meek was her mien as quite unveiled she came
In presence of the mighty Persian king.
Her garb, of some diaphanous fabric, clung
Mistlike about her stature, telling all
Its willowy delicacy; her gold hair
Showed in bright leash how plenteous were its coils,
Wrapping her small drooped head; both arms were nude,
But laces lay thick-plied on loins and breast.
No jewel or trace of ornament she wore,
And while toward Shah-Zarar she slowly moved,
“A hundred fairer faces pine unkissed,”
He thought, “in that seraglio whose long floors
For seven sweet years my foot hath never paced!”

Then Dara, pausing midway of the hall,
Flung from her supple throat a film of scarf
That seemed to melt in vapor, and now at once,
With no least hint of prelude, softly danced.

Gentle of movement, while she thus began,
But full of pliant rhythm and somnolence,
Her body in ordered action bowed and swayed.
Harmonious was the sequence of her steps,
Each gesture fraught with dexterous elegance,
Each posture clothed in dignity and ease.

“Apt,” thought the king, with all a critic's phlegm;
“Yet many a girl in Ispahan may match
Thus far the scope of her accomplishment.
A sure precision in her equipoise
Offends like vanity; were it faultier,
With some appeal in it for leniency,
Less coldly perfect and deliberate,
Less wrought by codes of schools, its power were more.” ...

But Dara had not ended yet her dance,—
Nay, scarce had she begun its wizardries.
And soon her motions, quickening, lost all look
Of study or plan, but seemed alone to breathe
A spirit of candid impulse, fervid truth.
Music, as though of breezes rustling leaves,
Or tinkle of waters through a mossy gorge,
Or ripple of dreamy seas on elfin sands,
Woke round her, following where she leapt or crouched,
Exulted or desponded, fired or mused.
Her hair, as if unbound by viewless hands,
Dilated, fluttering like a golden flame
And suiting each new bend of her white arms.
The gauzes at her bosom, drifting back,
Had bared its curves of snow, unseen till now.
Her eyes had grown a splendor, mild yet keen;
New lineaments and meanings filled her face,
And tremulous at the verges of her lips,
Faded or flashed her rich mesmeric smile.

Forward, with flushing cheek, leaned Shah-Zarar.
The spell had fallen upon him ere he knew.

No wreath of haze, from bastions of great hills
Blown to fantastic shape by summer wind,
Drifts with an airier buoyancy than now
The form of Dara seemed to glide and swim.
Her dance, through some untold resource of art
Miraculous, or sorcery still more strange,
Had grown the incarnate history of love,
Its joys, regrets, hopes, yearnings, fears, despairs ...
In turn all lived, throbbed, shuddered where she swept,
Here ardent and there languorous, here alert
With blissful torture, there forlorn with doubt.
The agony, the expectancy, the pang
Of disappointment, the brief meagre cheer
Of consolation,—every phase of love
Spoke in her sinuous change and counterchange ...
Then victory wed with ecstasy at last
Rose rapturous after suffering ... Now her glance
Was blithe delirium, her ethereal arms
Intoxication, her swift-panting mouth
Enticement, her unfathomable smile
The drowsy mystery of all love's delight!

“Allah protect me!” murmured the great King ...
He rose, to fly the hall, then backward sank ...
Too late he rose; the spell had mastered him.

Wild-eyed he gazed on Dara where she danced;
He stretched both arms out while she nearer drew;
His breath came hard; all thought of realm or name
Had perished from his mind or conscience; floods
Of weird fleet mist were hurrying through the hall,
And in their flexuous volumes he descried
Nothing save Dara, beautiful past thought—
An houri, a devil, he was careless which—
Radiant amid these folds of rushing cloud.

Nearer she drew, the enchantress, nearer yet,
Still weaving the wild wonders of her dance ...
“Great King,” she whispered, “grant thy slave a boon.”

“What boon?” cried Shah-Zarar, with riot heat.
“Ask all thou wilt. The boon, ere asked, is thine!”

Then Dara laughed a low melodious laugh,
And whispered, “Thou wilt grant it not, I know!”
Staggering, the King had risen: “Whate'er it be,
'T is thine. By Mahomet I swear 't is thine!”

Then Dara laughed once more; her eyes were homes
Of luminous promise, and her lifted face
Beamed ravishment from symmetries unguessed
Till now ... “I ask the head of thine Esmeh!”

Between her words, thus given, and what next fell,
It seemed to Shah-Zarar one moment's flash ...
Later, vague memories thrilled him that he spoke
With harsh command, while hearing as in dream
Warnings from minions born but to obey,
And that in wrath he towered insistently
Till seized by fright men fled to work his hest,
However terrible, and that Dara danced
More near his throne's foot, and he stooped to her,
Infatuate, pleading she would share his power,
And rule, his Dara, queen as he was king.

Then suddenly the wan mists fled and made
The audience-hall as ever it had been,
Save that a eunuch cowered before his throne,
Bearing a head whose neck yet dripped with blood,—
Esmeh's!
And now, crying out with grief,
The wild King burst the trammels of his trance;
And as he wakened, echoing his mad wail,
The sorceress vanished with a shriek of hate,
To leave him glaring at her ghastly work.

Many the silent centuries ago
Since fell this deed of shadowy tragedy;
But night-winds breathe it yet o'er glades and dells
Of Persian hills; and moonlit streams that pour
From Demavênd's high snows yet murmur it;
And Caspian billows mourn it as they break;
Or southward, where Persepolis rears pale
Her marble memories of dead state, the stars
Robe in their melancholy of eloquence,
Whose voice is light, the anguish of the tale.