XIII THE PROMOTION OF THE SOLDIER

Serdar-i-Jang, the Wazir of the west, Of all mankind had served his country best By weeding it. The terror of his name Lapped up the barren Pusht-i-kuh like flame, Till the Shah smiled: "My other lords of war lose Battles, but he wrings love from my Baharlus." He smote them hip and thigh. The man was brave. Having four wives, he needs must take for slave Whatever captive baggage crossed his path, And never feared love for its aftermath. Thus fared the Wazir while his locks were blue. The silver in them found him captive too. The singing caravan in chorus flowed Past the clay porticoes of his abode. She came, he saw, was conquered—like a puppet Drawn to the window, to the street and up it, Forth to the desert, leaving in the lurch His pleasant wars and policies to search For what? He knew not. Haply for the truth Whose home is open eyes, not dreams or youth. But this he dimly knew, that something strange, Beauty, had come within his vision's range; And a new splendour, running through the world, Drummed at the postern of his senses, hurled Him forth, this warrior proud and taciturn, Footsore upon a pilgrimage to learn Humility.... These beggars, in whose wake He toiled, ne'er paused for him to overtake Their echoes. When at dusk he joined their ring None rose or bowed. All watched him. Could he sing? And he could not, for never had he thrown His days away on verse! He sat alone, So that his silence stamped him with the badge Of hanger-on or menial of this haj. Thrust as he would with much unseemly din, He found no place beside the palanquin, Till Seyid Rida, scholar of Nejaf, Took pity on him, saying: "You shall laugh At these black days when, having served your time, You share the sovereignty of Persian rhyme. Be patient, pray to Allah, O my son, For power of worship. It shall come anon...." Seyid Rida spoke in vain. The Wazir's place So far behind the Queen, her perfect face But half-divined, as Sight denied to Faith, A doubt lest love itself should be a wraith Dazzling but mocking him, these stirred his passion To sworn defiance, to his last Circassian And thoughts of many a woman taken by force, Restive and then submissive as a horse. And now.... He followed in the wake of vision Lofty and pure as Elburz snows. Derision Would follow him in turn!... He shook his fist Toward the feet his soul would fain have kissed: "Oh, I was born for women, women, women. Through my still boyhood rang the first alarm; And since that terror ever fresh invaders Have occupied and sacked me to their harm. I am the cockpit where endemic fever Holds the low country in a broken lease From waves that ruined dykes appear to welcome. Only one great emotion spares me—Peace! "I have grown up for women, women, women; And suffering has had her fill of me. My ears still echo with receding laughter, As shells retain the voices of the sea. I am the gateway only, not the garden, That opens from a crowded thoroughfare. I stand ajar to every passing fancy, And all have knocked, but none have rested there. "And I shall die for women, women, women, But not for love of them. Adventure calls Or waits with old romance to disappoint me Behind the promise of surrendered walls. I am the vessel of some mad explorer, That sails to seek for treasure in strange lands Without a steersman in a crew of gallants, And, finding fortune, ends with empty hands." A deathly silence fell. Green-turbaned men Fell noiselessly to sharpening their knives On their bare hardened feet. Seyid Rida sighed: "Alas, your heart is set upon reward For gifts of self. You cannot understand Love loves for nothing, brother. Those who serve God the most purely cannot count that He Will love them in return...." The Wazir scowled. But Dreamer-of-the-Age took him aside, "I would unfold a story like a carpet. The camel Tous told it to me last night: "King Suleiman's wives were as jewels, his jewels as stones of the desert In number. His concubines herded as desert-gazelles in their grace, That answered his bidding as meekly as all his wild animal kingdom, The beasts and the birds and the fishes. Yet the world was as pitch on his face. "Now it chanced that the ruler of Saba had news by a merchant of peacocks From this king like a hawk-god of Egypt, whose beak was set deep in the gloom Of his grape-purple beard, and she said: 'We shall see how his vanities stead him When from under the arch of his eyebrows he sees my feet enter his room.' "For her feet were far whiter than manna. Her body was white as the cry Of a child when the chords of hosanna draw the beauty of holiness nigh. The droop of her eyelids would fan a revolt from Baghdad to Lake Tsana, Her fingers were veined alabaster. The sprites of her escort would sigh, "As they bathed her with sun set in amber and cooled in the snow of a cloudlet, And taught her chief eunuch to clamber up moonbeams as fleet as a ghost: These, lavish of reed-pipe and tamburine, slaves of the Son of Daoud, let Her palanquin down into Zeila—gambouge and magenta, the coast!" And the Wazir cried, "Ha!" to the rhymes. "Round the harbour a hoopoe was strutting, for Suleiman's Seal had appointed Him messenger-bird, and he thought: 'If I bring the good news of this beauty, This Sovereign of Silkiness, I shall harvest great thanks and promotion.' So he flew to the Presence and twittered a text on the pleasure of Duty. "'Fulfiller of faint Superstition, whose hand rolls the eyeballs of Thunder, And lightens forked tongues on a mission of menace to bat or to eagle! There comes to your portal a vision whose light shall make Israel wonder. Immortal her beauty and mortal her glance that is soft as a seagull.'" And the Wazir cried, "Hey!" to the rhymes. "But Suleiman, sated with women and governance, lifted his beak From his beard. Naught escaped the magician, not a thought, not a tone. Ah, he knew All! He said: 'I have measured your mind as my pity has measured my people. We shall speak of reward when she comes; I may live to regret it—and you! "'Lo, I am the servant of God, whom I serve as you serve me, not asking For pay by each day or each act, but just for the general sum. The work of the world must be done without wage to be done to our credit. We shall profit in claiming our guerdon not by what we are but become.' "So the Queen came to Kuddus. Mashallah! Shall a picture be limned of her coming! Flushed dancers and lutists athrumming light-limbed as Daoud round the Ark! Crushed roadway and crowd-applause rumbled, loud music, hushed barbarous mumming! To the cry, 'On to Sion' above her, this lover rode straight at her mark!" And the Wazir cried, "Ho!" to the rhymes. "She had but to flatter the wizard to win him. He said to the hoopoe: 'I will haggle no more. You shall learn to your cost what the bargainer buys, Whose faith levies toll upon duty, whose trust will not serve me on trust, Or love for Love. On your head be it.' The hoopoe said: 'Cheshm—on my eyes!' "All other birds fainted with envy, as Suleiman lifted a digit. Thereon was the Ring-of-most-Magic. Then he spat on the dust from his bed, And the miracle came! for the hoopoe went swaggering out of the presence (So he struts in his walking to-day) with a crown of pure gold on his head. "But the Jews thus learnt avarice. Some one spread news of the bird-coronation To the ends of the kingdom. The tribes ran out as one man armed with lime, Bows, nets, slings—and slew the hoopoes for the sake of their crowns. There was profit In sport then; none other has liked them so well since King Suleiman's time. "They divided the spoil till in Israel only our messenger-bird Survived with two fellows.... He fled to Suleiman's closet for bast, Sobbing, 'Spare us, O king! Make a sign with the ring that men sing of! We fare as Amalekites. If I have sinned, I am punished. We three are the last "'Of our race. In your grace turn your face to our case. We place hope in your favour! My brood is a Yahudi's food. Israel—who disputes it—insane For gain. We are slain all day long by the strong sons of Cain. Let us waive our Gold bane for plain down, lest we drown in our own blood! Discrown us again!'" And the Wazir cried, "Hi!" to the rhymes. "The King made reply. He was sadder than rain in the willows of Jordan. 'We are God's passing thoughts. They alone that await their fulfilment are wise. You shall be for a warning, O hoopoe. I had given you more than gold-wages If you had believed we not only had ears, I and Allah, but eyes! "'Yet giving is fraught with forgiveness. Now therefore the crown you did covet Is gone. You are healed of your pride; you shall live till the Angel of Death errs From Allah's command. By my Ring-of-most-Magic the gold is transmuted. Go forth! He has set for a sign on your brow a tiara of feathers.' "So the hoopoe went forth in the glory of plumes that he won in this wise And wears. Then the hunters, assembled from the uttermost quarters of Sham, should Have shot, but did not, for they said: 'What a head! We will not waste an arrow On sport of this sort. We are sold! We were told it was gold and....'" Tamam Shud And the Wazir shrieked "Halt!" at the rhymes. But as he slept that night the Dreamer prayed That understanding might bedew his head. And so it was. The fountain of the Dawn Rose in the whiteness of the month Rajab, Washing the desert stones, and made each body Shine as the sun-swift chariot of a soul. While the last swimmer in the sea of slumber, Out of the deep, its jungled bottom, its ghosts, Its weight and wonders, rises to the surface In final breaths of sleep, the Wazir stirred And flung out joyful arms. Not otherwise The groping diver in the Gulf of Pearls, Having achieved adventure, comes to light And grasps the painted gunwale—with his prize. "For every hour and day Of youth that spelled delay In finding you, I pray To life for pardon, I that long since have faced My task in patient haste: Out of my former waste To make your garden. "With these soiled hands I made My Self (man's hardest trade). The sun was you: the shade My toil, my seed did. I drove my strong soul through Years in the thought of you, For whom my garden grew, And grew unheeded; "For you, an episode That lay beside your road, For me, my long abode, My will's whole centre. Lo now my task fulfilled, Yet not the hope that thrilled The stubborn realm I tilled For you to enter. "Ah, must all sacrifice Be weighed with balance nice! To ask the gods our price Makes all creeds shoddy. Then should I bargain now— Troubling my worship—how You will reward my vow Of soul and body? "I have not striven in vain, Though all my poor domain Cries daily for your reign. I hold its treasure, A source of splendour, known Haply to me alone, A boundless love—my own. Had you but leisure "To pause beside this spring A moment, harkening How through my silence sing The dreams that here rest, I yet might make you see Some of the You in Me. This song not I but we Have written, dearest." Long ropes of stillness joined the caravan Closer together; no man spoke a word, Till Dreamer-of-the-Age: "Friend, go up higher At the Queen's right hand." Seyid Rida smiled: "I knew you would outrun us." The Wazir Heard neither fame nor blame, and so was blest Because he sought praise only of the Queen.