I
Farabi and Avicenna
Grey mists enfolded Europe; and I heard
Sounds of bewildered warfare in the gloom.
Yet, like a misty star, one lampad moved
Eastward, beyond the mountains where of old
Prometheus, in whose hand the fire first shone,
Was chained in agony. His undying ghost
Beheld the fire returning on its course
Unquenched, and smiled from his dark crag in peace,
Implacable peace, at heaven.
Eastward, the fire
Followed the road Pythagoras trod, to meet
The great new morning.
The grey mists dissolved.
And was it I—or Shadow-of-a-Leaf—that saw
And heard, and lived through all he showed me then?
I saw a desert blazing in the sun,
Tufts of tall palm; and then—that City of dreams.
As though an age went past me in an hour
I saw the silken Khalifs and their court
Flowing like orient clouds along the streets
Of Bagdad. In great Mahmoun’s train I saw
Nazzam, who from the Stagirite caught his fire.
Long had he pondered on the Eternal Power
Who, in the dark palm of His timeless hand
Rolls the whole cosmos like one gleaming pearl.
Had he not made, in one pure timeless thought,
All things at once, the last things with the first,
The first life with the last; so that mankind,
Through all its generations, co-exists
For His eternal eyes? Yet, from our own
Who in the time-sphere move, the Maker hides
The full revolving glory, and unfolds
The glimmering miracles of its loveliness
Each at its destined moment, one by one,
In an æonian pageant that returns
For ever to the night whence it began.
Thus Nazzam bowed before the inscrutable Power,
Yet found Him in his own time-conquering soul.
I saw the hundred scribes of El Mansour
Making their radiant versions from the Greek.
I saw Farabi, moving through the throng
Like a gaunt chieftain. His world-ranging eyes
Beheld the Cause of causes.
In his mind,
Lucid and deep, the reasoning of the Greeks
Flooded the world with new celestial light,
Golden interpretations that made clear
To mighty shades the thing they strove to say.
He carried on their fire, with five-score books
In Arabic, where the thoughts of Athens, fledged
With orient colours, towered to the pure realm
Of Plato; but, returning earthward still,
Would wheel around his Aristotle’s mind
Like doves around the cote where they were born.
Then the dark mists that round the vision flowed
Like incense-clouds, dividing scene from scene,
Rolled back from a wide prospect, and I saw,
As one that mounts upon an eagle’s wing,
A savage range of mountains, peaked with snow,
To northward.
They glowed faintly, for the day
Was ending, and the shadows of the rocks
Were stretched out to the very feet of night.
Yet, far away, to southward, I could see
The swollen Oxus, like a vanishing snake
That slid away in slippery streaks and gleams
Through his grey reed-beds to the setting sun.
Earthward we moved; and, in the tawny plain,
Before me, like a lanthorn of dark fire
Bokhara shone, a city of shadowy towers
Crimsoned with sunset. In its turreted walls
I saw eleven gates, and all were closed
Against the onrushing night.
Then, at my side,
My soul’s companion whispered, “You shall see
The Gates of Knowledge opening here anew.
Here Avicenna dwelt in his first youth.”
At once, as on the very wings of night,
We entered. In the rustling musky gloom
Of those hot streets, thousands of falcon eyes
Were round us; but our shadows passed unseen
Into the glimmering palace of the Prince
Whom Avicenna, when all others failed,
Restored to life, and claimed for all reward
Freedom to use the Sultan’s library,
The pride of El Mansour; a wasted joy
To the new Sultan. Radiances were there
Imprisoned like the innumerable slaves
Of one too wealthy even to know their names;
Beautiful Grecian captives, bought with gold
From tawny traffickers in the Ionian sea.
A shadow, with a shadow at my side,
I saw him reading there, intent and still,
Under a silver lamp; his dusky brow
Wreathed with white silk, a goblet close at hand
Brimmed with a subtle wine that could uncloud
The closing eyes of Sleep.
Along each wall
Great carven chests of fragrant cedar-wood
Released the imprisoned magic,—radiant scrolls,
Inscribed with wisdom’s earliest wonder-cry;
Dark lore; the secrets of the Asclepiads;
History wild as legend; legends true
As history, all being shadows of one light;
Philosophies of earth and heaven; and rhymes
That murmured still of their celestial springs.
He thrust his book aside, as in despair.
Our shadows followed him through the swarming streets
Into the glimmering mosque. I saw him bowed
Prostrate in prayer for light, light on a page
Of subtle-minded Greek which many a day
Had baffled him, when he sought therein the mind
Of his forerunner.
I saw him as he rose;
And, as by chance, at the outer gates he met
A wandering vendor of old tattered books
Who, for three dirhems, offered him a prize.
He bought it, out of gentle heart, and found
A wonder on every page,—Farabi’s work,
Flooding his Greek with light.
He could not see
What intricate law had swept it into his hand;
But, having more than knowledge, he returned
Through the dark gates of prayer; and, pouring out
His alms upon the poor, lifted his heart
In silent thanks to God.
II
Avicenna’s Dream
But all these books—for him—were living thoughts,
Clues to the darker Book of Nature’s law;
For, when he climbed, a goat-foot boy, in Spring
Up through the savage Hissar range, he saw
A hundred gorges thundering at his feet
With snow-fed cataracts; torrents whose fierce flight
Uprooted forests, tore great boulders down,
Ground the huge rocks together; and every year
Channelled raw gullies and swept old scars away;
So that the wildered eagle beating up
To seek his last year’s eyry, found that all
Was new and strange; and even the tuft of pines
That used to guide him to his last year’s nest
Had vanished from the crags he knew no more.
There, pondering on the changes of the world,
Young Avicenna, with a kinglier eye,
Saw in the lapse of ages the great hills
Melting away like waves; and, from the sea,
New lands arising; and the whole dark earth
Dissolving, and reshaping all its realms
Around him, like a dream.
Thus of his hills
And of their high snows flowing through his thoughts
Was born the tale that afterwards was told
By golden-tongued Kazwini, and wafted thence
Through many lands, from Tartary to Pameer.
For, cross-legged, in the shadow of a palm,
The hawk-eyed teller of tales, in years unborn
Holding his wild clan spell-bound, would intone
The deep melodious legend, flowing thus,
As all the world flows, through the eternal mind.
I came one day upon an ancient City.
I saw the long white crescent of its wall
Stained with thin peach-blood, blistered by the sun.
I saw beyond it, clustering in the sky,
Ethereal throngs of ivory minarets,
Tall slender towers, each crowned with one bright pearl.
It was no desert phantom; for it grew
And sharpened as I neared it, till I saw,
Under the slim carved windows in the towers,
The clean-cut shadows, forked and black and small
Like clinging swallows.
In the midst up-swam
The Sultan’s palace with its faint blue domes,
The moons of morning.
Wreaths of frankincense
Floated around me as I entered in.
A thousand thousand warrior faces thronged
The glimmering streets. Blood-rubies burned like stars
In shadowy silks and turbans of all hues.
The markets glowed with costly merchandise.
I saw proud stallions, pacing to and fro
Before the rulers of a hundred kings.
I saw, unrolled beneath the slender feet
Of slave-girls, white as April’s breathing snow,
Soft prayer-rugs of a subtler drift of bloom
Than flows with sunset over the blue and grey
And opal of the drifting desert sand.
Princes and thieves, philosophers and fools
Jostled together, among hot scents of musk.
Dark eyes were flashing. Blood throbbed darker yet.
Lean dusky fingers groped for hilts of jade.
Then, with a roll of drums, through Eastern gates,
Out of the dawn, and softer than its clouds,
Tall camels, long tumultuous caravans,
Like stately ships came slowly stepping in,
Loaded with shining plunder from Cathay.
I turned and asked my neighbour in the throng
Who built that city, and how long ago.
He stared at me in wonder. “It is old,
Older than any memory,” he replied.
“Nor can our fathers’ oldest legend tell
Who built so great a city.”
I went my way.
And in a thousand ages I returned,
And found not even a stone of that great City,
Not even a shadow of all that lust and pride.
But only an old peasant gathering herbs
Where once it stood, upon the naked plain.
“What wars destroyed it, and how long ago?”
I asked him. Slowly lifting his grey head,
He stared at me in wonder.
“This bleak land
Was always thus. Our bread was always black
And our wine harsh. It is a bitter wind
That scourges us. But where these nettles grew
Nettles have always grown. Nothing has changed
In mortal memory here.”
“Was there not, once,
A mighty City?” I said, “with shining streets,
Here, on this ground?” I spoke with bated breath.
He shook his head and smiled, the pitying smile
That wise men use to poets and to fools.—
“Our fathers never told us of that City.
Doubtless it was a dream.”
I went my way.
And in a thousand ages I returned;
And, where the plain was, I beheld the sea.
The sea-gulls mewed and pounced upon their prey.
The brown-legged fishermen crouched upon the shore,
Mending their tarry nets.
I asked how long
That country had been drowned beneath the waves.
They mocked at me. “His wits are drowned in wine.
Tides ebb and flow, and fishes leap ashore;
But all our harvest, since the first wind blew,
Swam in deep waters. Are not wrecks washed up
With coins that none can use, because they bear
The blind old images of forgotten kings?
The waves have shaped these cliffs, dug out these caves,
Rounded each agate on this battered beach.
How long? Ask earth, ask heaven. Nothing has changed.
The sea was always here.”—
I went my way.
And in a thousand ages I returned.
The sea had vanished. Where the ships had sailed
Warm vineyards basked, among the enfolding hills.
I saw, below me, on the winding road,
Two milk-white oxen, under a wooden yoke,
Drawing a waggon, loaded black with grapes.
Beside them walked a slim brown-ankled girl.
I stood beneath a shadowy wayside oak
To watch them. They drew near.
It was no dream.
Blood of the grape upon the wrinkled throats
And smoking flanks of the oxen told me this.
I saw the branching veins and satin skin
Twitch at the flickering touch of a fly. I saw
The knobs of brass that sheathed their curling horns,
The moist black muzzles.
Like many whose coats are white,
Their big dark eyes had mists of blue.
Their breath
Was meadows newly mown.
By all the gods
That ever wrung man’s heart out in the grave
I did not dream this life into the world.—
Blood of the grape upon the girl’s brown arms
And lean, young, bird-like fingers told me this.
Her smooth feet powdered by the warm grey dust;
The grape-stalk that she held in her white teeth;
Her mouth a redder rose than Omar knew;
Her eyes, dark pools where stars could shine by day;
These were no dream. And yet,—
“How long ago,”
I asked her, “did the bitter sea withdraw
Its foam from all your happy sun-burnt hills?”
She looked at me in fear. Then, with a smile,
She answered, “Nothing here has ever changed.
My father’s father, in his childhood, played
Among these vines. That oak-tree where you stand
Had lived a century, then. The parent oak
From which its acorn dropped had long been dead.
But hills are hills. I never saw the sea.
Nothing has ever changed.”
I went my way.
Last, in a thousand ages I returned,
And found, once more, a City, thronged and tall,
More rich, more marvellous even than the first;
A City of pride and lust and gold and grime,
A City of clustering domes and stately towers,
And temples where the great new gods might dwell.
But, turning to a citizen in the gates,
I asked who built it and how long ago.
He stared at me as wise men stare at fools;
Then, pitying the afflicted, he replied
Gently, as to a child:
“The City is old,
Older than all our histories. Its birth
Is lost among the impenetrable mists
That shroud the most remote antiquity.
None knows, nor can our oldest legends tell
Who built so great a City.”
I went my way.