Constantinople
When Othman’s sword, as Paleologue’s, is broken
And Othman’s gods are smitten to the dust,
And naught remains, not even a rusty token
Of their hierarchal cruelty and lust;—
When church and mosque and synagogue shall be,
Despite the bigot’s cry, the zealot’s prayer,
Unbounded in their bounties all and free
In every heritage divine to share;—
When thou shalt rise, rejoicing in thy loss,
Upon the ruins of a state nefast
To reconcile the Crescent and the Cross
And wash thy hands of thine unholy past;—
When with the faith new-born of East and West,
Which spans the azure heights of man’s desire,
The spirit of thy people, long oppressed,
Is all a-glow with its undying fire;—
When thou thyself, Byzantium, shalt stand
In the minaret of Freedom and thy voice,
Rising above the muazzens in the land,
Bids all the seekers of the light rejoice;—
When in thy heart the flame of freedom sings,
And in thy hand the torch of freedom glows,
And in thy word the sword of freedom rings,
And in thy deed the seed of freedom grows—
Then shall we call thee Mistress of the Morn,
Bride of the Straits, Queen of the Golden Horn.
Andalusia
I
Alcazar
There was a rhapsody in all her moods,
A child-like grace, a passion unrestrained;
Her throne, which bard and saki shared, was stained
With virgin wine as with the blood of feuds;
And in her lyric-woven interludes,
Epitomizing destiny and time,
Her spirit, hid in opalescent rhyme,
The shades of Melancholy still eludes.
Where’er she trod, the rose and bulbul meet;
Where’er she revelled, gardens ever blow;
Where’er she danced, the henna of her feet
Yet lends a lustre to the poppy’s glow;—
Arabia, dark-eyed, light-hearted, fair,
Is but a flower in Andalusia’s hair.
II
Alhambra
Gods of the silence, still remembering
The dying echoes of her lute, bemoan,
In canticles of golden monotone,
Her Orient splendor too soon vanishing;
And while lions guard her courts, grey eagles wing
Around her turquoise domes, and seedlings blown
From distant lands to her hushed fountains cling,
Yea, and the sun himself sits in her throne.
Time, once her vassal, lingers near the streams
That woo the shadows of her crumbling walls,
And, musing of Alhambra’s glory, dreams
Of Elegance and Power in Myrtle Halls;—
Arabia, once counted of the strong,
Is but a sigh in Andalusia’s song.
III
The Mosque
In the bewildering grove of colonnades,
Once brilliant with a flood of saffron light,
Poured from ten thousand lanterns day and night,
Her memory, like spikenard in the glades
Of distant Ind or Yemen, never fades;
And her devotion, though the ages blight
The mystic bloom of her divine delight,
Still casts on alien altars longing shades.
But through the mihrabs which the humble hand
Of genius wrought, o’er marbles hollowed deep
By knees that only Piety could command,
I see Oblivion coming forth to reap;—
Arabia, in Allah’s chaplet strung,
Is but a word on Andalusia’s tongue.
IV
Al-Zahra
Not with the Orient glamor of her pleasures,
Nor with fond rhapsodies of prayer or song
Could she her sovereign reign a day prolong;
Not in the things of beauty that man measures
By the variable humor of his leisures,
Or by the credibilities that change
From faith to fantasy to rumor strange,
Was she the mistress of immortal treasures.
But when the holy shrine Europa sought,
Herself of sin and witchcraft to assoil,
The sovereigns of al-Zahra maxims wrought
And Averroes burned his midnight oil;—
Arabia, the bearer of the light,
Still sparkles in the diadem of Night.
In the Palm Groves of Memphis
The Khamsin1 comes robed in the Lybian sands,
Veiled in the haze of June,
Armed with Sahara’s serpent-wreathed brands,
Shod with the sun and moon;
Swift winging in a cycloramic flame—
Of Typhon born, unseeing and untame—
She comes her reign of terror to proclaim,
While crowning day and night with all the blazonry of tropic noon.
She claps her iridescent wings, and lo!
The rolling heat,
Tremulous, reverberant, a-glow,
Sibilant, fleet,
Sweeps over the land with unabating ire,
Devouring Spring’s heritage entire,
Setting the very pyramids a-fire,
Engulfing even the turtle’s shelter and the turtle-dove’s retreat.
Alas! where are the roses which the prime
Of summer share
With the sesame, the myrtle and the thyme
In meadows fair?
Where is the sacred lotus and the bloom
Of cumin and mimosa, whose perfume
Once filled the shrine of Isis and her tomb?
Where is the pomegranate flower that shone in Cleopatra’s hair?
Where is the riant beauty of the land
Of mystic runes
That decorates its shimmering robes of sand
With emerald moons?
Where are the emerald shelters, desert-bound,
That with the prayer of caravans resound?
Where is the desert trail, the watering ground
That murmurs low of lost oases amidst the fast dissolving dunes?
Where is the caravan that yesternight,
To the merry sound
Of bells, set out of the city of delight
To Nubia bound?
Where is the Nubian caravan that late
Passed heavy-laden through Denderah’s gate,
Speeding to reach the city for the fete,
When gold and silver freely flow, when Allah’s bounties abound?
Where is the crested lark, the golden thrush
Of the sacred grove,
Which made the sensitive accacia blush
And bloom with love?
Where has the bearded bustard fallen? where
Is Ibis, once the pet of Hermes fair,
Nursing his purple wings and his despair?
Where is the red flamingo hiding, where’s the house of the turtle-dove?
Across the welkin, like a shadow cast
Upon a cloud, but one
Undaunted dips his black wings in the blast
And rears anon
His form against the rushing winds; alone
The vulture hovers around the flame-draped throne
Of Death, and over the palms that rock and moan,
Peering through the desolation, staring at the laughing sun.
And Khamsin, in her chariot of fire,
Upon which clings
The moult of her unsatiable desire,
Delirious sings,
And shakes the harvest from her tangled hair—
The sesame seeds, the grasses sere, the tare,
The golden tassels which the rushes wear,
The purple feathers of the ibis and the swallow’s shrivelled wings.
She shakes her booty from her sapphire tresses
In gleeful guile,
As she in passing savagely caresses
The crouching Nile;
While everywhere,
