XVI THE ARGUMENT OF THE SCEPTIC

Beside the Sufis ran a whited wall. Two cypress-trees peeped over from the waist, Stiff, motionless as toys. Among their spires A lithe voice mounted and leaned down again: "Come, for to-night the hills are all white marble Under a sapphire dome, Where bats scrawl riddles which the bulbuls garble For owls to answer. Come. "The air is sick of moon-discoloured roses, The plain stagnates like some Weird archipelago of garden-closes And dead, bleached waters. Come. "O night of miracles! Come, let us wander Over this ghostly sea To that dark cypress-circled island yonder, In whose clear centre we "Will lie and float in phosphorescent ether. Thank heaven that night is cool As day was scorching. Let us watch together The lovers in the pool. "Look in! Lie still! A jewelled ripple spangles The hand upon her hair; While, lying listless on her back, she dangles A finger in the air. "How still he is. Your motionless perfection Absorbs him utterly. Doubtless you seem to him his love's reflection Face downwards in the sky, "Whence I am hanging, seeing only her face, As he sees only yours. Lean down! And they shall meet us at the surface. O silent paramours "We bring to you, by stealth, while men are sleeping, A gift. Let your domain Have it for ever in its steadfast keeping; We shall not come again. "We bring our shadows: just the fleeting semblance Of human love. O might Your waters hold them for us in remembrance Of one short summer night! "A wondrous night, when two reflections hovered, Dreaming of love aloud Here by the pool, until the moon was covered By an impending cloud; "And then they lost each other. Where but lately The magic mirror shone, A wider shadow, cruelly, sedately, Passes ... and we are gone." The Dreamer stayed: "Who speaks of passing here? The river passes, passes to the sea, Drawing in rills the voices of the earth To make its voice that merges in the swell. The river passes and the boatman's chant Is swallowed up in distance and the night. Or is it, friend, the boats alone that pass? The river, as I sometimes think, remains. Even so it is with lovers and with love. Then sing us something wise where laughter lurks, As underneath the desert, from the hills Whence cometh help, the hidden water-course Chuckles. Upon this thread your garden hangs. Nay, never shake that cypress head! We need Not only sun but cloud and tears to build Laughter, the rainbow of the inner man." But the voice answered, or the cypress sighed: "I am the brain of Hitherto. In darkness I revolve and flash. Books are the fortune I ran through. My painted pen-case, yellow hue And yellow sash "Were famed from Yezd to Yezdikhast. I taught what space and learned what mud is. My metaphysics were my past. Alas, I left my lust till last Of all my studies. "I kept my mind so clear and keen By grinding guesswork into saws, You scarce could fit a meal between The triumphs of my thought-machine, Its puissant jaws. "The process of my intellect, Mazed by the clapping hands that fed it, Rolled on. They, founding a new sect On premises that I had wrecked, Gave me the credit. "And so I used my fame to part Man from his planks to sink or swim; I plumbed his shallows, drew the chart.... Illusions broke the blacksmith's heart. I envied him "Suddenly, and set out to moon About this garden scholarwise. One silver laugh, two silken shoon, To fill my empty anderûn With splendid lies "I ask of shadows, battering My bars, and wonder why I ache. O You who made both cage and wing, Let me redeem my toilsome spring By one mistake." In the parched road the Dreamer took his lute And tossed these chords across the battlement: "The myrtles of Damascus, The willows of Gilan, Have sent the breeze to ask us If aught but sceptics can Deny the spirit calling To flesh—we are the call— And save themselves from falling Behind a whited wall. "Most pure was Abu Bakr, And Allah speeds the plough That furrows young wiseacre Across an open brow. Most fair is self-possession— Give me the open road— But Solomon in session Went mad and wrote an ode. "All fields of thought are arid, No earthly soil is rich, By thirst of knowledge harried And those ambitions which The heart like Pharaoh's harden To let no impulse go. But every yard's a garden Through which we mystics flow. "I conjure hawthorn blossom From Bakhtiari vales— As when one looks across some Choked channel where the sails Of anchored vessels jostle— I tune their rhythmic sway In hollows where the throstle Is only dumb by day. "Red routs of rhododendron, That slope to Trebizond, Rapt round the garden's end run To mask the waste beyond. There facts are free to wonder Down pathways like the streak Of silver pavement under The palms of Basra creek. "In charity of jasmin My poor designs are clad, As nature cloaked the chasm in The ramparts of Baghdad, Where passed the fabled Caliph With Giafar by night To mystify the bailiff At Garden-of-Delight. "The orchard-grave of Omar, Neglected Nishapur, Where sprays of petaled foam are, Sighs through my garden-door With boughs round whose gnarled stem men Had never thought to twine Green tendrils from rich Yemen, The sunburnt Smyrniot vine. "Wild lilies, whose rich red owes Its undertone to brown, From Kurd-betented meadows Break out in every town. Blind alleys' bursts of lilac, Where russet warblers woo, Are set to cover my lack Of vocal retinue. "The myrtles of Damascus, The poppies of Shiraz, Have sent the breeze to ask us If they are dumb, because Wisdom and one that had her To wife still hug the fence, Where we have left a ladder To rescue men from sense." The cypress swayed. Hard by another voice Climbed the twin tree, and thus its theme began: "Young man, Shirín is out of date. We have to thank the West That Attar's latest is too late To waken Interest, And one of Love's great names, Majnûn, Is now generic for a loon. "Our crust is cooling, and the bent For culture bears its fruit, As we that weed out sentiment Likewise outgrow the brute; While Providence matures a blend That pure philosophers commend "In logic. Constancy declined Because we pruned our morals. Love practises the change of mind That ethics preach in quarrels...." There cried the Dreamer: "Who are you that mock Exiles in search of that from which they came, Intent to know themselves and so the Lord Whose ways are as the number of men's souls? By these we compass our escape from Self, The mirage in the waste through which we pass Across the bridge Phantasmal to the Real; Until, forgetting Self, we see in All The Loved that leads us to the eternal beauty Shown in a thousand mirrors yet but one. These are the Sufi tenets. What of you?" From the first tree the quavering voice replied: "It is my double, Peder Sag, The summit of the civilized Above such heats as woman or flag. It is my double, Peder Sag, Who bows the poet to the wag, The hero to the undersized. It is my double, Peder Sag, The summit of the civilized. "His mission is to educate By atrophy, the cure for spasm, And so to serve the future state. His mission is to educate A world of fellowships that hate One living thing—enthusiasm. His mission is to educate By atrophy, the cure for spasm. "He dresses us in faultless drab. His colour-scheme for you is tan, And, level as a marble slab, He dresses us in faultless drab. Him urchins call Abu Kilab: The Father-of-the-Modern-Man. He dresses us in faultless drab. His colour-scheme for you is tan. "My double did a deal for truth. He teaches balance to the Young, And knows a better thing than youth. My double did a deal for truth, His emblem is the wisdom tooth, A flowery and fruitless tongue. My double did a deal for truth. He teaches balance to the Young." Serdar-i-Jang impatient pulled his beard And growling Tous his bridle: "Let him be The fool I was, and so mine enemy From whom I part in peace." Farid Bahadur Shrugged that: "Our wares are not for such as these." Once more the Brain: "I might have come with you, Leaving my gloomy castle in the air, For, overgrown with tangles, in its flank Lies hid the thrice-veiled door of happiness; Only—my double has mislaid the key." Seyid Rida laughed and answered: "We have found it." The Lover knocked: "'Tis I!" The Loved One made reply: "There is no room for two Beyond the Gateway." In solitude he learned The Secret; so returned Saying: "O Love, 'tis you." And entered straightway. A wicket opened gently of itself, And so a sceptic joined the caravan.