Many Gods

The sun moves here as a master-mage of nature all day long,
With fingers of heat and light that touch to a mystical growth all things.
The spell of him puts pale Time to sleep, as an opiate strange and strong,
And a waft of his wand, the wind, enchantment brings.

The python roots of the rubber-tree where the cobra slips in peace
Are wonders that he has waved from the earth as a presage of his power.
And the giant stems of the bamboo-grass, the pool astounded, sees,
Are a marvel to keep it still hour after hour.

III

The long lianas that reach in dreamy rout from tree to tree
Are dazed with the sense of sap that he calls to the tangle of their sprays.
The scarlet-hearted hibiscus stands entranced and the torrid bee
Is husht upon its rim, as in amaze

And there the palms, the talipot with its lofty blossom-spire,
The cocoanut and the slim areca listening await
What sorceries of his trembling rays of equatorial fire
Will next be laid upon some lesser mate.

The river, too, that he winds as a magic circle round the wealth
He has here engendered, has the glide of a serpent lost in trance;
And scents of clove and cinnamon that sip cool from it, in stealth
Pour it upon the air like necromance.

And down where the rain-tree and the rife breadfruit together lean
Over its flow, and the flying-foxes hanging head to earth
Suddenly drop then flap aloft on large bat-wing, is seen
More of his mazing wizardry in birth.

VII

All day long it is so that his hot hypnotic eye commands
With steady ray; and the earth obedient brings enchantment forth.
All night long in the humid dark the high-voiced hyla-bands
Chant of it in chill strain from South to North.

VIII

A wondrous mage, in a land whose dreams are made reality
As swift as clouds are made when the young Monsoon is in the South.
A land that is born of the sea and by it destined e'er to be
Beyond all fear of famishing and drouth.

THE WIND'S WORD

A star that I love,
The sea, and I,
Spake together across the night.
"Have peace," said the star,
"Have power," said the sea,
"Yea!" I answered, "and Fame's delight!"

The wind on his way
To Araby
Paused and listened and sighed and said,
"I passed on the sands
A Pharaoh's tomb:
All these did he have—and he is dead."

THE SHRINE OF SHRINES

There is in Egypt by the ancient Nile
A temple of imperishable stone,
Stupendous, columned, hieroglyphed, and known
To all the world as Faith's supremest shrine.
Half in debris it stands, a granite pile
Gigantic, stayed midway in resurrection,
An awe, an inspiration, a dejection
To all who would the cryptic past divine.
The god of it was Ammon, and a throng
Of worshippers from Thebes the royal-gated
Forever at its fervid pylons waited
While priests poured ever a prophetic song.
And yet this Ammon, who gave Egypt laws,
Is not—and is forgot—and never was!

FROM A FELUCCA

A white tomb in the desert,
An Arab at his prayers
Beside the Nile's dark water,
Where the lone camel fares.
An ibis on the sunset,
A slow shadouf at rest,
And in the caravansary
Low music for the guest.

Above the tawny city
A gleam of minarets,
Resounding the muezzin's
Clear call as the sun sets.
A mystery, a silence,
A breathing of strange balm,
A peace from Allah on the wind
And on the sky his calm.

THE EGYPTIAN WAKES

I woke at night in my eternal tomb
The desert sands had hid a thousand years,
And heard the Nile-crier across the gloom
Calling, "The flood has come! beseech the gods!"
I rose in haste, as one who blindly hears,
And sought the barterers of grain and wine
Culled for the praise and service of divine
Great Isis, by the slave who for her plods.
But as I passed along, woe! what was this,
Strange faces and strange fashions and strange fanes
Standing upon the midnight; Oh, the pains
That swept across my startled thought's abyss!
I moaned. My body crumbled into dust.
And then my soul fled Here—where all souls must.

THE IMAM'S PARABLE

Behold, the wind of the Desert rose,
Khamsin, in a shroud of sand,
And swept the Libyan waste, across
To far Somali-land.
His voice was thick with the drouth of death
And smote the earth as a burning breath,
Or as a curse which Allah saith
Unto a demon-band.

The caravan from the oasis
Of palm-engirt Kûrkûr
Shuddered and couched in shaken heaps,
The horror to endure.
Its mighty Sheik, like a soul in Hell
Who longs for the lute of Israfel,
Longed for the trickle of Keneh's well,
Imperishably pure!

Three days he longed, and the wind three days
About him whirled the shroud.
Then did a shrill dawn bring the sun—
And a gaunt vulture-crowd.
A few bleak bones on the Desert still
Lie for the Judgment Day to thrill
Again into life—if Allah will:
Let not your heart be proud.

SONGS OF A SEA-FARER

Many are on the sea to-day
With all sails set.
The tide rolls in a restive gray,
The wind blows wet.
The gull is weary of his wings,
And I am weary of all things.

Heavy upon me longing lies,
My sad eyes gaze
Across the leagues that sink and rise
And sink always.
My life has sunk and risen so,
I'd have it cease awhile to flow.

All the winds of the sea weary,
All the waves of the sea rest,
All the wants of my heart settle
Softly now in my breast.
All the stars that in heaven anchor,
Golden buoys of Elysian light,
Send me across the gulf promise
That I am faring right.

So while clouds that are left lonely
At the gates of the far West
Wait, so still, for the moon's stiller
Stealing from her nest,
I am held by a low vesper
Haunting afar the vague twilight,
Then with my soul at peace whisper
Hallowedly good-night.

A SONG OF THE SECTS

(In a Jerusalem tavern)

A Latin and Greek, praise God, are we, Armenian and Copt,
And we're all drunk as drunk can be, for we've together sopped.
Not one of us but spits at the creed the others mouth and purr,
But we all believe, we all believe, in the Holy Sepulchre!

The Armenian sings

The Copt comes out of Egypt-land and with a braggart face
He'll tell you that his fathers piled the Pyramids in place.
In his Monophysite Christ we set no faith, the blasphemer!
But we all believe, we all believe, in the Holy Sepulchre!

The Latin sings

The Greek will curse you if you call his Ikons images,
And damns your soul to Hell—no purgatory, if you please!
About Procession of the Ghost he's prickly as a burr,
But he believes, as we all believe, in the Holy Sepulchre!

The Copt sings

Of heretics God leaves unburnt, Armenians are worst,
They will not celebrate the Day, that was for Christ the first.
No wine with water mixed for them, as well mix heathen myrrh—
Or not believe, as we all believe, in the Holy Sepulchre!

The Greek sings

The Latin swears his Roman Pope is judge infallible.
Wherefore you may be very sure the Devil from his skull
Will drink a toast unto all liars, who such a lie aver—
Tho they believe, as we all believe, in the Holy Sepulchre!

The Four again

A Latin and Greek, praise God, are we, Armenian and Copt,
And we're all drunk as drunk can be, for we've together sopped.
Not one of us but hankers to hang all Jews on a Juniper,
For we all believe, we all believe, in the Holy Sepulchre!

THE CITY

Soft and fair by the Desert's edge,
And on the dim blue edge of the sea,
Where white gulls wing all day and fledge
Their young on the high cliff's sandy ledge,
There is a city I have beheld,
Sometime or where, by day or dream,
I know not which, for it seems enspelled
As I am by its memory.

Pale minarets of the Prophet pierce
Above it into the white of the skies,
And sails enchanted a thousand years
Flit at its feet while fancy steers.
No face of all its faces to me
Is known—no passion of it or pain.
It is but a city by the sea,
Enshrined forever beyond my eyes!

VIA AMOROSA

(To A. H. R.)

When we two walk, my love, on the path
The moon makes over the sea,
To the end of the world where sorrow hath
An end that is ecstasy,
Should we not think of the other road
Of wearying dust and stone
Our feet would fare did each but care
To follow the way alone?

When we two slip at night to the skies
And find one star that we keep
As a trysting-place to which our eyes
May lead our souls ere sleep,
Should we not pause for a little space
And think how many must sigh
Because they gaze over starry ways
With no heart-comrade by?

When we two then lie down to our dreams
That deepen still the delight
Of our wandering where stars and streams
Stray in immortal light,
Should we not grieve with the myriads
From East of earth to West
Who lay them down at night but to drown
The longing for some loved breast?

Ah, yes, for life has a thousand gifts,
But love it is gives life.
Who walks thro his world alone e'er lifts
A soul that is sorrow-rife.
But they to whom it is given to tread
The moon-path and not sink
Can ever say the unhappiest way
Earth has is fair to the brink.

DUSK AT HIROSHIMA

Softly the bamboo bends
As the sun sinks down unglowing,
Softer the willow ends
A sigh to the dusk around.
Quickly the brief bat wends
His flittering way, thro flowing
Fields of the autumn air,
That are husht of the city's sound.

Temple and thatch and stream
Are forgetting the light that lingers,
Mountain and mist in dream
Already are lost, afar.
Faintingly comes the beam
Of the moon—then viewless fingers
Tinkle a samisen,
And astir on the East is a star.

THE WANDERER

When moonlight on the face
Of the great Buddha falls
As he sits in Nirvana
On the shores of Kamakura,
When the pines about him place
Soft shadows at his feet
Like offerings of penitence and tears,
I hear in the grace
Of the wind's low susurra
A voice that calls me still
To my home within the West,
But I've lingered overlong
In the East's strange arcana
And no more is there desire within my breast.

I left it when a boy,
That far home and, alas,
'Twas so fair that my dreaming
Earth had fairer was a madness.
I left it for the joy
Of wandering the world,
And heathen-hearted lands have I beheld!
But when at last cloy
Of delight brought sadness
Like lotus to my veins,
And forgetfulness seemed fate,
I had fared unto this shrine
And the moon as now was beaming,
And here have I awaited—and await.

But not for any gift
Of its god, or any grace
That in living or in dying
Men in text or sutra sigh for.
And not for any shrift
Nirvana has, or skies
Where Paradise imperishably smiles.
But only for the sift
Of the wind, that seems to die for
My soul's enduring peace
In the dwelling of the Tomb.
And only for the drift
Of the moon that comes denying
Eternity to everything but Doom.

IN A SHINTO TEMPLE GARDEN

Under the torii, robed in green,
The old priest creeps to the shrine.
Over the bridge the still stork stands,
The crow caws not in the pine.

Far in the distance bugles blow,
War's bloody memory wakes.
The priest prays on—for his sons that are dead,
And the heart within him breaks.

FAR FUJIYAMA

Against the phantom gold of failing skies
I see the ghost of Fujiyama rise
And think of the innumerable eyes
That have beheld its vision sunset-crowned.
The peasant in his field of rice or tea,
The prince in gardens dreaming by the sea,
The priest to whom the sêmi in the tree
Was but some shrilling soul's incarnate sound.

And as I think upon them, lo, the trance
Of backward time and distant circumstance,
Of Karma's all-remembering necromance,
Lies suddenly before my boundless sight.
It is as if, a moment, Buddhahood
Were given to me; as if understood
At last were vague Nirvana's vaguer good;
As if time were dissolved in living light.

ON MIYAJIMA MOUNTAIN

(To A. H. R.)

Out on the sea the sampans ride
And the mountains brim with mist and sun.
O we are in Japan again
And the spell is about us spun!
The spell of the old enchanting East,
Of Buddha and many a blissful priest,
The spell that has never, never ceased
To haunt us!

Glad we behold the temple-tops
And the lanterns in religious row
Standing, like acolytes of stone,
Where the pine and camphor grow.
And o'er them the old pagoda prays
Blessing upon their dreaming days,
And upon the eightfold sacred ways
From Sorrow!

Ah, and the torii too is there
Where the tranced sea enters to his shrine
Daily, with tidal mystery
And majesty divine.
He enters now, as the nuptial sea
Of love first entered our hearts, to be
Lord of their tides eternally,
And Master!

OLD AGE

I have heard the wild geese,
I have seen the leaves fall,
There was frost last night
On the garden wall.
It is gone to-day
And I hear the wind call.
The wind?... that is all.

If the swallow will light
When evening is near;
If the crane will not scream
Like a soul in fear;
I will think no more
Of the dying year,
And the wind, its seer.

ON THE YANG-TSE-KIANG

Down the Yang-tse bat-wing junk
And tatterdemalion sampan glide,
Sails of brown and black and yellow swinging.
Down the Yang-tse bat-wing junks
Fish-eyed and gaudy take the tide,
Forth to the sea in sloth they ride,
The coolies singing.

Off in the field the peasant toils
And along the canal the low tows slip,
Fruit of the red persimmon piled upon them.
Off in the field the peasant toils—
With lip and brow the dull years strip
Bare of the dreams of life, whose grip
Has grimly drawn them.

High on the hill the yamên rests
And the temple beside it sleeps in sun,
Far in the distance faints the city dreary.
High on the hill the yamên rests,
And dun dead shadows o'er it run:
This is the land where Time begun
And now grows weary.

THE SEA-ARMIES

The wild sea-armies led by the wind
Are following in our wake,
White-crested shouting millions moving on.
They have broken their camp of Calm and o'er
The world rebellion make,
With banner of cloud and mist above them drawn.

They have heard the call of infinite Death,
The ordering of his word,
"Arise, go forth and conquer where ye can;
For that is the only law ye know,
Its mandate men have heard,
Let them beware when they your path would span.

"Let them beware, for I am lord
Of all that on earth has name,
And unto you is given most my might.
Ride on, ye have many a ship to rend,
And many a mast to maim,
And many a land to lash and soul to fright."

So on they ride, a ravaging horde,
From shore to shuddering shore,
Beyond us in the bleak star-buried dawn;
Nor know that when they have camped again
And sleep, Life will restore
Unto her world the hope they have withdrawn.

THE CHRISTIAN IN EXILE

(Mandalay)

The palms along the old fort wall are paling,
The mountains in the evening light are red,
The moon has dropped into the moat from heaven,
A spell barbaric over all is spread.
But what is that to him, a stranger lonely,
In a land strange to all his faith and dim?
He cares not for old splendours, he would only
Hear on the air a simple Sabbath hymn.

The paddy-birds their snowy flight are taking
From the tall tamarind unto their nest,
The bullock-carts along the road are creaking,
The bugles o'er the wall are sounding rest.
On a calm jetty looking off to Mecca
Sons of Mahomet watch the low day's rim.
He too is waiting for it—with an echo
Upon his lips of a believer's hymn.

The red gate-towers rise against the twilight,
The palace of the heathen king is hid,
The white bridge bent across the moat beside it
Seems now of all unholinesses rid.
He wishes it were so with all this city
Whose Buddha-built pagodas skyward swim;
But he can only gaze on them and pity—
And sing within his heart a Christian hymn.

THE PARSEE WOMAN

(At Bombay)

Cast me out from among you,
I will not see my child
Laid aloft where the vultures
May clamour for him, wild!
The earth you say is holy,
Not to be soiled by death,
And a Parsee still should hold divine
What Zoroaster saith.

Ay, and so I will hold it,
But see his pale sweet face,
As pure as the palest flower
Left dead in Spring's embrace.
The sun we worship daily
Shrined it for seven years,
Then shall it go to cruel beaks,
There where the sea-wind veers?

No, no, no! tho you send me
A beggar from your door,
You, my lord, whom I honour,
And you, his sisters four,
To whom there have come no children
To make your bosoms feel
How even a thought so full of throe
Can make my sick brain reel.

Ah, you are deaf? you scorn me
And loathe, as a thing defiled?
My lord, I am but a woman
Who longs to see her child
Laid in a tomb, entreasured
Under the shrouding sod.
O would I had never given birth,
Or that earth had no God!

SHAH JEHAN TO MUMTAZ MAHAL

I see as in a pale mirage
The palm that o'er you sways,
The waters of the Jumna wan are beating.
One pearl-cloud, like a far-off Taj,
A dome of grief betrays—
Its beauty as was yours will be too fleeting!

The world is wider than I knew
Now that your face is gone!
While you were here no destiny seemed boundless.
So I am lost and find no clue
To any dusk or dawn!
Life has become a quest decayed and groundless.

Come back! come back or let me find
The jungle leads at last
Unto your lips and bosom recreated!
O somewhere I again must wind
My arms about you, cast
Into one word my love all unabated!

PRINCESS JEHANARA

Where the road leads from Delhi to the South,
And dingy camel-trains creep in the dust
Past ruin-heaps of old Firozabad
And Indropat unpitied of the drouth;
By a lone tree, above a Pool whose sad
Prayer-water all the turban-people trust,
Is a heat-hidden tomb, and on it just
A few faint blades of bent and grieving grass.
"Jehanara's it is," with ready mouth
A Moslem tells the stranger, "once she said,
'The covering of the poor is only grass,
Let it be mine alone when I am dead.'"
And who has stood there, where about her Rest
Rise high Imperial tombs, knows hers is best.

A SINGHALESE LOVE LAMENT

As the cocoanut-palm
That pines, my love,
Away from the sound
Of the planter's voice,
Am I, for I hear
No more resound
Your song by the pearl-strewn sea!
The sun may come
And the moon wax round,
And in its beam
My mates may rejoice,
But I feast not
And my heart is dumb,
As I long, O long, for thee!

In the jungle-deeps,
Where the cobra creeps,
The leopard lies
In wait for me.
But O, my love,
When the daylight dies
There is more to my dread than he!
Harsh lonely tears
That assail my eyes
Are worse to bear,
For the misery
That makes them well
Is the long, long years
That I moan away from thee!

O again, again,
In my katamaran
A-keel would I push
To your palmy door!
Again would I hear
The heave and hush
Of your song by the plantain-tree.
But far away
Do I toil and crush
The hopes that arise
At my sick heart's core.
For never near
Does it come, the day
That draws me again to thee!

ON THE ARABIAN GULF

From a far minaret of faithful cloud
A wraith-muezzin of the sunset cried
Over the sea that swung with sultan pride,
"Allah is Beauty, there is none beside!
Allah is Beauty, not to be denied
By Death or any Infidel dark-browed!"

And every wave that worshipped, every one
Under the mosque of heaven arching high,
Lifted a white crest with assenting sigh
And answered, "Let all gods but Allah die,
Yea, let all gods! until the world shall cry,
Beauty alone is left under the sun!"

THE RAMESSID

Upon an image of immortal stone,
Seated and vast, the moon of Luxor falls,
Lending to it a stillness that appals,
A mystery Osirian and strange.
The hands outplaced upon the knees in lone
And placid majesty reveal the power
Of Egypt in her most triumphal hour,
The calm of tyranny that cannot change.
It is of that Great king, who heard the cries
Of millions toil to lift him to the skies,
Who saw them perish at their task like flies,
Yet let no eye of pity o'er them range.
What rue, then, if his desecrated face
Rots now at Cairo in a mummy case?

IMMORTAL FOES

At Bedrashein between the pyramids
I saw the wingèd sun fold up his pinions
And sink into the nether world's dominions
Where Set sent ill on the Egyptian dead.
I saw the ancient Desert, that outbids
The Nile for the date-lands between them spread,
Fling over Memphis that is vanishèd,
Another shroud of sand, then bid his minions,
The winds, lie down upon their boundless bed.

I saw where temples vowed to Serapis
And granite splendours men name Pharaonic
Are kept by Time in silence and sardonic
Concealment—mummied in deep mystic tombs.
And when the stars came out in quiet bliss,
I heard Eternity with all its dooms,
Past and to come, sound softly the mnemonic
Of Death who waits all worlds that Life enwombs.

THE CONSCRIPT

The camel at the old sakiyeh
Toils around and round.
Aweary is he of the Nile
And of the wailing sound
Of the slow wheel he turns all day
To lift the water on its way
Over the fields of Ahmed Bey,
That with green grain abound.

Aweary is he, too, of fellàheen
Who compel him on,
With thick-voiced chanting till the day
Over the West has gone.
For the bold Desert was he made,
The Bedouin, his lord, to aid,
Not for this peasant wheel of trade
That ever must be drawn.

But on he toils while dahabiyeh
And dark felucca glide
Below him on the glassy flow
Of the gray river's tide.
Then when the night has come lies down,
In sleep the servile day to drown—
Like all whom Life turns with a frown
From their true fate aside.

About This Book

THE WIND'S WORD

THE SHRINE OF SHRINES

FROM A FELUCCA

THE EGYPTIAN WAKES

THE IMAM'S PARABLE

SONGS OF A SEA-FARER

A SONG OF THE SECTS

(In a Jerusalem tavern)

THE CITY

VIA AMOROSA

(To A. H. R.)

DUSK AT HIROSHIMA

THE WANDERER

IN A SHINTO TEMPLE GARDEN

FAR FUJIYAMA

ON MIYAJIMA MOUNTAIN

(To A. H. R.)

OLD AGE

ON THE YANG-TSE-KIANG

THE SEA-ARMIES

THE CHRISTIAN IN EXILE

(Mandalay)

THE PARSEE WOMAN

(At Bombay)

SHAH JEHAN TO MUMTAZ MAHAL

PRINCESS JEHANARA

A SINGHALESE LOVE LAMENT

ON THE ARABIAN GULF

THE RAMESSID

IMMORTAL FOES

THE CONSCRIPT

NAVIS IGNOTA