The poems of Richard Henry Stoddard :: :: University of Virginia Library

Noman, the King of Hira, sat one day
In his pavilion, pitched at Karwanak,
With Bahram Gour, the son of Yezdejird,
And Adi Ibn Zeid, the Persian bard.
Cross-legged on scarlet cushions stuffed with down
They sat and smoked; the bubbling of their pipes
Was like a river in the land of sleep.
The curtain of the tent was drawn aside,
Looped up with golden cords; a twinkling gleam
Glanced from the tassels, smote the water-bowls,
And perished in the great sea-emerald
On Noman's turban: other light was none;
They lolled away the hours in purple dusk.

Before the doorway of the tent they saw
The palace park and garden bright with spring.
A pillared avenue of stately palms
Slept in the sun; a fountain rose and fell,
Breaking the silver surface at its base;
Gold-fish like sunken ingots lay in heaps
Beneath the fountain's rain; beside its rim,

Dipping his long bill in a lotus cup,
A black crane stooped; between the silent palms
A length of silken carpet was unrolled:
A white gazelle dangled a silver chain,
Picking its way through tufts of broidered flowers.
Flowers of all hues and odors streaked the ground,
Roses, fire-red, large tulips, cups of flame,
Banks of snow lilies turning dew to pearls,
And rolling rivers of anemonies,
The flowers that Noman loved; their crimson leaves
Were rubies set on stalks of emerald.
Broad meadows stretched afar, wherein, dim-seen
Through winking haze, the still Euphrates lay—
The great Euphrates fresh from Babylon.

Between their whiffs of smoke with happy eyes
They drank the landscape in; to Bahram Gour
It grew his father's garden at Madain—
Save that the Emir's daughter was not there,
Whereat he sighed: his long beard Adi stroked,
And thrummed his idle fingers in the air,
Turning a couplet in his tuneful brain.
Noman alone was sad, for he nor had
The poet's idleness, nor prince's youth;
Grown gray in troubled rule he longed for rest,
But found it never: fair things made him grieve,
Because their lives are short. He saw the end.

“Why grasp at wealth and power? Why hoard up gold?
Or make our whims a law for other men?
Earth hides her gold in veinèd rocks and hills,
Packs it in river sands: we dig it out,
And stamp our Kingly faces in its light,
And call it ours. Does Earth give up her claim?
Not she, she calmly waits, and takes it back.

100

We sift the sands, dive down into the waves,
Ransack the caves for gems; Earth gives them up.
I have an hundred caskets full of pearls,
Ten chests of chrysolites, a turquoise plate
That holds a maund of corn, a chandelier,
The chains whereof are beryls linked with gold,
Its flame a ruby, found in Balashan.
Not mine, but Earth's; for I shall pass away,
I, and my race, but Earth will still remain,
And keep my gems; in palaces like mine,
To swell the treasury of future Kings,
Or, haply, in the caverns where they grew.

We build rich palaces, and wall them in,
Make parks and gardens near, plant trees, sow flowers,
And say, ‘All this is ours!’ But what says Earth?
She only smiles her still cold smile of scorn.
Forests a thousand parasangs in length
Are hers, and hers the tropic's zone of bloom,
And when we die our marble palaces:
She lets the jackal prowl about their courts.

My days have numbered five and sixty years.
Twenty and eight were passed upon the throne:
I count them lost. I may have gained some power,
Added a few wild tribes to those I rule,
And treasures to my treasure, but my life—
(I had so little time to think of that,)
Is not a whit the richer, save in cares.
Ah, who that knows himself would be a King?”

So spake the King the secret of his heart,
Like one who babbles to himself alone.
His head dropped on his bosom, and his beard
Hung in his lap: the shadow of his words

101

Drifted across the stream of Adi's thought,
And when the King had ended he began:

“Name me the King whose power was vast enough
To cope with Death, or cheat the Sepulchre.
Whither is Chosroes gone, the mightiest, he,
Of Persian Kings? Whither did Sapor go?
And they, the fair-haired race, the Roman lords—
Tell me why no memorial lives of them.
And he, the nameless King, who Hadhr built,
Where Khabur and the lordly Tigris flow.
He faced his palace walks with marble slabs,
Polished and white, and raised his roof so high,
His ridgy roofs, the birds made nests thereon.
The thought of dying never crossed his mind,
But not the less he died, and died alone;
For when Death came to that unhappy King
The very sentinels had fled his gates.”

“The end of all things must be near at hand,”
Said Bahram Gour, half earnest, half in jest,
“For lo, the world hath now two Solomons,
Whose wisdom is compressed in three small words,
The knell of Folly, ‘All is Vanity!’
It may be so, my dear philosophers,
But are you free from blame? What says the song?
‘It is my sight that fails me, not the rose
That waxes pale; my scent that is too coarse,
No lack of odor in the heavenly musk.’
Cry down the world who will, but Bahram Gour
Will love it still.” “And I,” the poet said,
His fancied sadness dying with the words
That gave it birth, “and never more than now,
When to the quiet tent and drowsy pipe
Succeeds the eager life on flying steeds.”

102

From out their marble stalls the dusky grooms
Led forth the royal stud of milk-white mares.
The falconers came next with hooded birds,
Each with a silver label on its leg;
And then the keepers with the beasts of chase
In chains, lithe panthers, and keen-scented dogs,
Tigers, whose tawny hides are mapped with black,
And lions trained to hunt,—the white gazelle
Fled from their cruel eyes to Noman's tent.
Slowly like one who wills away a dream,
Lifting his head the King called home his thoughts.
He saw the trembling creature at his feet,
And fondled it; the voice of Adi's lute,
Wooing a song, brought Adi to his mind,
The jingling of a scabbard Bahram Gour;
Adi still sat and smoked, but Bahram Gour
Had risen, and was girding on his sword.
“My sombre fancies led me from the chase;
But now that I have found myself once more
Let us depart at once. They wait for us.”
He beckoned, and the grooms led up their steeds.
Between the palms whose shadows struck their brows,
Launching across the carpet's bed of flowers,
Around the fountain's glittering mist they rode.
The fretful panthers snuffed, and tugged their chains,
The calmer lions, quiet in their strength,
Strode on, and dragged their keepers after them.

Not far from Hira by the river's side,
Where stood a ruined city was a tomb.
Between the river and the tomb were trees
Whose twinkling leaves were shaken by the wind.
Dropping the hunt before the game was roused
Thither the King and poet rode alone;
They saw the shaken boughs, but felt no wind.

103

“The leaves are tongues,” said Noman, “and they speak,
With some grave message charged, or prophecy.
You read the hidden meaning of the flowers,
Can you expound the language of the trees?”

“Many have here dismounted from their steeds
And kneeling camels in the days of old;
Have slaked their thirst with wine beneath our shade,
And led their camels to the limpid tide.
They strained their shining wine from precious flasks,
They tossed the splendid trappings of their steeds;
Gayly they lived, the pensioners of Time:
But ere life's noon they died, cut off by Fate.
Their ashes drift and waste like withered leaves,
Blown by the east wind now, now by the west.”
So spake the trees to Adi. So he spake.

“All things are in a league with my grave thoughts
To make me think of death,” replied the King.
“If leaves whose little lives of sun and dew
Last not the year out say that man is dust,
What must the dust, where men by millions sleep,
The dead of ages, say?” The poet stooped,
And scooped his two hands full of dry white dust,
And held it to his ear. “Interpret it.”
“Know that the dust was once a man like thee,
Know, too, that thou wilt one day be but dust.”
So spake the dust to Adi. So he spake.

“The words are changed,” said Noman, “not the tune,
For that still urges man's mortality.
When man forgets his end, nor earth nor heaven
Can hold their peace. The tomb remains to speak.
I go to question that. Wait for me here.
Fear not to see me enter its dark walls;
The time will come when they will shut me in

104

Forever: now I shall return again.”
He waved the poet back, and throwing wide
Its mouldering doors went down into the tomb.

Before the place a watchful sentinel
The poet paced his beat with noiseless steps,
Hearkening the while to catch the King's least call.
He heard the talking leaves above his head,
The river rippling on the sandy shore,
But not the King; the grass was growing thick
Around the tomb, but where the mares were hitched
It grew not; cutting with his sword a swath,
He bore an armful to the hungry mares:
But still the King nor called to him, nor came.
At last the fiery arrows of the noon
Drove back the lessening shadows of the trees,
And hemmed them in a circle round their trunks;
To this the bard retreated from the heat.
The happy light came down upon his heart,
And stretched at ease he sang a summer song.

“The morning moon is set, the stars are gone;
Beside the palace gate the peacocks strut,
And in the tank the early lotus wakes.

The dew fell all night long, and drenched my robe,
The nightingale complained to me, in vain:
I waited for the dawn to meet my love.

She stands before me in the garden walk,
Her blue robe bordered with a fringe of pearls;
She offers me a rose; I kneel to her.

‘Nay, speak not yet, though all your words are pearls;
Your smiles outrun your speech, and greet me first:
But when you smile not, speak, or I shall die!

105

‘I kiss the rose,—I would it were your lips!
But wherefore? Such a kiss would end my days.
Pity me, Sweet, my heart is at your feet!’

My long black hair is streaked with silver threads,
Years dim my eyes; yet still in thought I see
The Rose of Beauty in the garden walk.

She sleeps the long, long sleep; disturb her not
O nightingales, be silent, or depart:
And thou, my heart, be still, or moan and break.”

The river rippled louder, but the leaves
Crowding together whispered, and the clash
Shook one at Adi's feet; the dust was stirred.
He raised his eyes, and lo, a cloud of dust
Blown from the clattering hoofs of flying steeds.
He knew the milk white mares, and knew the troop
That rode them Noman's huntsmen; Bahram Gour
Trailing his spear rode wildly at their head.
“The King is lost,” he shouted as he came:
“Not so,” said Adi, pointing to the tomb,
“The King is there. He muses in the tomb,
Perchance he sleeps. I would have shared his dreams,
But he forbade, and made me wait him here.”
Then Bahram Gour went down into the tomb,
To wake the King, and many of the lords
Went with him; those who stayed behind were hushed.
They heard the talking leaves above their heads,
The river rippling on the sandy shore,
But not the King. At length a voice was heard—
“The King is dead!” and Bahram Gour came out
Bearing a lifeless body in his arms.