University of Virginia Library

XVI.THE MALADY OF MOIO.

Moïo, the Tzarovitch (bolder is no man!)
Walkt to the Bath with the Turk lords one day:
Mahmoud the Pacha's white wife (and what woman
Is fairer than she is?) was walking away.
Even as the sun, o'er the ardours of even,
Looks on the moon, and the moon on the sun,
Wistfully, each, disunited in heaven,
Soon to be pacing far pathways alone,
So through the mist of a moment of ecstacy,
Thrilled with a rapture delicious and dim,
Mute on the pale Pachinitza the Tzarovitch
Gazed, and the pale Pachinitza on him.
Moïo walkt silently back to his palace:
Troubled his heart was, and changed was his mood.
Straightway he sicken'd of love, and lay dying,
Dying of love for the wife of Mahmoud.
Ladies the loveliest all came to visit him:
Only the wife of Mahmoud stay'd away.
Then the Sultana rose up and wrote to her—
“Wouldst thou be greater than all of us, say?
Moïo is lying upon his couch dying;
Sore is his sickness, and fatal they say:
Ladies the loveliest all come to visit him,
Thou, art thou more, Pachinitza, than they?”
She, when she heard of it, loopt up her white sleeve,
Loopt up her light robe as white as a star;
Presents she bore for him, worthy a monarch's son,
Figs from the sea-coast, and grapes from Mostar.
Lightly she trod o'er the long golden gallery,
Past all ungreeted the corridor dim,
Pale, the dumb purple pavilion she enter'd,
Where the Sultana was watching by him.
Softly she sat by his bed-side, and softly
Wiped from his forehead the fever, and said,
“This is a malady known to me surely!
Long did I watch, and long weep by the bed
Once where my brother lay moaning and mad of it,
Moaning and madden'd, unable to move;
Poison they said it was. I, too, have drunk of it.
This is the passionate poison of love.”
Trembling he listen'd, as trembling she utter'd it.
Lightly he leapt from the couch where he lay,
Fasten'd, behind her, the long golden gallery,
Laught as he sank on her soft lips, and they
Three white days, little heeding the daylight,
Three blue nights, little noting the moon,
Seal'd by sweet kisses in silent caresses,
Rested, while round them May melted to June.
Gaily the nightingale sang in the garden.
Love the bird sang of, and sweet was the tune.
Three white days, little loving the daylight,
Three blue nights, ill at rest 'neath the moon,
Mahmoud the Pacha walkt, mourning his miss'd one,
“Come, Pachinitza, come back to me soon!”
Sadly the nightingale sang in his garden.
Love the bird sang of, but harsh was the tune.
Then, when the fourth day was low in the orient,
Mahmoud the Pacha sat down in his hall;
There a white letter he wrote to the Sultan:
“Sultan Imperial, dear master of all!
There's a white dove, with a gold treasure casket,
Flown to thy doors from thy servant's abode.
Send back my white dove, restore me my treasure,
If thou hast fear of the justice of God.”
But to the Pacha the Sultan sent answer:
“Mahmoud, my servant, behoves thee to know
There's in my palace a falcon unhooded,
And what he hath taken he never lets go.”