The Children by the Lake of Dreams

A Persian Fragment

Hafiz it was who mixed the poppy drink,
Ammamon tinct with opiate and myrrh,
Fit for a poet's great experiment,
Heavy with drowsiness that could confer
A month of languor and unbroken dream,
An aphrodisiacal condiment
For the two orphans from the Shah's hareem.
Beltar and dark Gulcheranoos
On Bactrian camel backs he had conveyed;
Nested in fleece-lined baskets, and burnoose;
Sleeping with henna'd lips — both boy and maid —
To Aradan beside the Lakes of Khar,
Where the miasmic fox fires wander loose,
Scaring the far-strayed shepherds back to Lar.
There where the Hableh seeps into the waste
Of Kishlak, leaving violets, — to a cave
The whey-faced eunuchs carried them in haste
And left them with three dwarflets and a slave,
With baskets of sweet kickshaws and strange meats,
And coverlets from Cashmere, and soft clothes
White as the blinding cerement that greets
The freezing traveler through Caucasian snows.
This was the subtle magic of the plan:
Scarce had the children wakened in their bed
Than all the dwarflets and the slave began
To say they were in ghost-land and both dead.
This was Al Aaraaf; all that they could see —
The rocks, the dreamful lake, a gloomy mountain —
Would be the same for all eternity,
Still as a lily in a stagnant fountain.
Hafiz has made his slaves a tale rehearse
Of the sad friends left in the world behind,
The sudden funeral, a flowered hearse,
And the mute sorrow of their dappled hind —
At which Gulcheranoos dissolved in tears
And Beltar cried out at her pretty sorrow;
Then wept himself at thought of endless years,
Life but a memory; hope without to-morrow.
Thus for a while they wept in bitter grief,
But taking comfort in such mutual tears,
They smiled again and, finding sorrow brief,
Rose from their nest like birds when morning clears,
And laughed to see how pale and tall they were
In shrouded simars white as marble plaster,
While in their cheeks warm hope began to stir
Like wine stains creeping out through alabaster.
Still as the pupil of a Cyclop's eye
In the round cavern's entrance looked a lake,
And wondering how sweet it was to die,
Toward this now hand in hand their way they take;
And suddenly came out into such light
It made a fire burn palely by the cave,
By it they sat, and shuddered at their plight
When the lake wrinkled with a noiseless wave.
To right and left one meadow swept away
Through cloudy jewels of ponds and seemed to take
Itself into the very source of day;
Out of its tearful face there looked the lake
With rushes like short lashes round an eye
Which swam with all that moved and was awake,
Yet fixed a polished stare forevermore
Dreaming of herons standing by its shore.
Eastward there lonely lifted range on range
Of leaden hills which crept into the murk
Of brooding clouds that never seemed to change,
In-folded like the turban of a Turk;
And sunsetward a palely mottled stream
Crept to its grave in meadows, like a snake
That slid to nether worlds, where in a dream
The djinns might come their sultry thirst to slake.
Beltar, his failing courage faintly masked,
Could scarce reply when pale Gulcher'noos said,
" Will not Mustafa come for us? " and asked
If this was paradise. He shook his head —
The Prophet's camel with the eagle wings
Would never find them here! It was too late
To turn their thoughts now upon holy things —
Dying, their souls had somehow missed the gate.
So sadly pulled the jasmine from his brows
Fragrant with happy memories of the earth.
Meanwhile the dwarfs were weaving them a house
Of willow withes, and whispering in mirth
At heaping rushes for the children's beds
Inside the wattled cabin, by the hearth,
Deep, in one pile; one pillow for two heads.
At seeing which young Beltar now took hope,
Thinking how softly there the " dead " might rest,
He cheered Gulcheranoos, who ceased to mope,
And smiling faintly sank into the nest.
Safe from all mortal troubles and alarms,
They lost themselves in one another's arms —
The past was raveled out like useless rope.
What was there now to hinder or abash
His hands from wandering through her loosened curls?
Only a lamp within a calabash
Betrayed his cloudy fingers in their whorls,
Till soft and quiet in that nest they lay
Like two birds sleeping in a moony ray.
But limpidly that gentle lamp burned on
Trying to dim itself through Beltar's eyes,
Less like a moonbeam now, more like a dawn
It drove the shadows out of paradise.
Now like the sun it flashed on Hafiz' plan
And flooded morning into Beltar's heart —
" Lovers had been since time himself began;
They were the first who would not have to part. "
" Gulcheranoos! " he whispered, pressing near,
" We shall be thus for all eternity! "
And poured with sighs in her delightful ear
The hopeful excess of his rhapsody: —
How they would stay forever in this place,
Now they were dead and shut of mortal things,
In dalliance; while immortality
Should speed upon the flash of passion's wings.
This dear, enchanted tale that boy to girl
Has always told, exalted by love's glory,
The usual whisper through the " unusual " curl,
Pristine forever with a rainbow hoary,
Here by the Lake of Dreams it would come true,
With long eternity for love's to-morrow;
Young Beltar kissed Gulcheranoos and said he knew! —
No kindly friends prognosticated sorrow.
She lay deliciously within his arms,
Murmuring like pigeons by the gate in spring:
Her head drooped back while to her heart's alarms
His arched throat trembled like a fledgling's wing.
And the still fire that glows through porcelain flesh
Brought the faint shadows underneath their eyes
That opened like dark violets, wide and fresh,
Still limpid with a spiritual surprise.
But now, as if the lamp were going blind,
The flame waned slowly in the calabash.
Only a verdant glow shone through the rind
On loosened zirjamah and slipping sash,
On ivory hands and silken kamarbands.
Were it not dark at last we might behold her,
And him from ankles to the shoulder —
But love, the poets say, is always blind.
Let us not light the lamp as Psyche did
To spill the scalding oil upon his wing;
Beltar has found his dear Gulcheranoos;
Gulcheranoos dear Beltar; let them cling
Awhile at least in what they call " forever, "
And let the future for a while be hid —
Next day it was the loveliest kind of weather,
And when they woke they heard two robins sing.

DUET

Young dawn is born
Upon a fleecy sky;
The robin sings;
The sun is drawing nigh;
The sun is hastening,
And the rose must die.
Why, lover, tell me why?
Reply:
When first she feels
His burning eye
She opens wide
Her dewy petals
That the bees bestride —
She opens wide ...
Oh, tell me, lover,
What does this betide?
Replied:
The bee will use her
For his greedy need;
The sun has ripened her
To mix the seed.
Thus roses speed,
Indeed.
Indeed!
But tell me, lover,
Tell me of the rose —
Why must she die?
Reply:
Discover, oh, discover
Him who knows!
Thus to the lyric argument of birds
The sleepy lovers peered out of their door,
And while to thoughtless songs their souls made words,
The world without seemed brighter than before: —
The lake was sending incense to the sun;
The hills were newly varnished by the day;
There were the dwarfs and slave who had begun
The gentle tasks of ghost-land in a play.
Here were no mortal cooks, no grumbling slovens,
To sate full appetite with Thursday's meat,
But almond manchets baked in silver ovens;
Custards from panniers warmed by vinous heat;
And a delicious medlar cooled in snow;
Sunflower seeds and sugared mandragore;
Light morning wine that warms, but does not glow,
Chosen by Hafiz from a Christian's store.
Thus breakfasted these orphans who were dead —
Or so they thought — and liked this other world
Where all was theirs, and quietness instead
Of life in base confusion counterwhirled.
Meanwhile, before the cave was deftly spread
A carpet with quaint birds and flowers rife,
Bordered by beasts an unseen Adam named
Hid in the middle by the Tree of Life.
On this Gulcheranoos was softly laid
On a deep pillow; overhead a mat
Was swung from branches. This the dwarfs had made,
While Beltar plaited her a little hat.
And from the corded bales within the cave
Came ivory, carved, and inlaid lady-boxes
Arranged down carpet-paradise by the old slave
Amid the beasts like jeweled paradoxes: —
Here was an ivory chest in hinged section
With pearl-set drawers for pots of unguents sweet,
And powdered asses' milk for the complexion;
Rings for the toes, and bangles for the feet.
There was a silver jar of saffron ashes,
And combs of beechwood and of mottled tortoise,
Carbuncled heron plumes for tall panaches,
Buckles from Hindustan with cunning mortise,
A zone of silver shells, an amber necklace,
Shoes, shawls, a dress complete from toes to head,
The bales of Hafiz furnish forth, as reckless,
The slave before her on the carpet spread
Her wardrobe, Ali Baba's aftermath —
Loot from Greek treasure, horned Iskander's bowl
Made for Roxan, lay steaming with her bath,
Bordered with grapes that silver foxes stole;
And heathen tales of love; Apollo flew
After the nymph, young Krishna gave a feast
Quite un-Mohammedan — so holy men
Had called this bowl " The Sin of West and East. "
In it the dwarfs from gold-stopped calabashes
Poured warm verbena while Gulcher'noos rose,
Leaving a nest behind of silks and sashes
She stepped into the bath. ... Do you suppose
Young Beltar closed his eyes? Oh, no, not he!
Oh, lucky, happy Beltar, of all lovers
The happiest since Lilith was a wife,
To see your love thus in reality!
Instead of dreams as others do in life;
So to be gladdened by your very eyes,
On earth — to think it was eternity —
Thus to be maddened into paradise!
Hafiz had planned it so. One poet's dreams —
One dream , he said, should be reality.
And as for all the rest of us it seems
Only in poet's dreams such sights we see —
Or in our own when on a lonely bed
The poet-moon looks down and brings the bride
Or the belov'd, and the night is sped
In naked, silver moonlight, side by side.
But all this is for Beltar, all for him!
The dampened curls like clusters of the south,
The olive shoulders; arms that tapered slim
To finger tips as rosy as her mouth;
Spanned brows above her eyes than dawn stars clearer,
Hips like an antelope's, with dainty limb,
A bosom smooth as starlight on a mirror
Breasts like twin eggs upon the desert's rim —
Such as the ostrich leaves in wind-smoothed dust,
Twin domes of ivory with a sunset rust.
Well might young Beltar wish again for night!
Her waist ... but all now that he sees
Are dimpled islands just awash, her knees,
Her hands like lilies growing in the light.

" Come, flower by the lake, and hear me sing .
You are the lily; I the bird of spring.
Spring makes me sing, and she must be obeyed,
Before the wilting summer bids you fade.
Winter is gone; the month of buds is past.
The day for you to bloom has come at last.
A day of happy voices, one of them
Is singing to you, lily on your stem. "

Flushed like pomegranate blossoms in the spring
Under the April light of Beltar's eyes,
Gulcheranoos was pleased to hear him sing,
While with a towel from Shadukam she dries.
Then donned a light and flowered palampore,
And sitting cross-legged like a god of Burma,
Some antimony chose from out her store
And lightly touched her parchment lids with surmeh.
Dark glowed her pupils from the shadowed rim
Like violets weeping dew in twilight dim,
While Beltar felt his soul begin to swim
As if pale Ishtar looked her love at him.
Trembling, he laid his head upon her lap
And turned to gaze up smiling at his doom —
It fell, a song that lulled him in a nap
With words that still bring flowers to Hafiz' tomb.

" Clear Rocknabad that flows by Shiraz-town
Through violet-clouded meadows winding down ... "

The sun leaned westward now beyond the noon
And crystal bowls, with cresses, mint, and chives,
Each with a polished cocknos bill for spoon
The slave brought, with a dressing fit for Dives.
They ate, then sought their fortune in the bowls,
But soon preferred to read it in their eyes,
And finding there the secret of their souls
Fell in each other's arms again with cries.

" Your eyes that fill my heart with warm delight
Moisten the very beams wherewith they thrill
Like evening stars on lakes that dance their light
To lovers on the hill. "

And so beguiled a languid afternoon
With lover's talk, and saw a summer rain
Trailing her misty skirts down a lagoon;
The river fading in the mystic plain.
A place where halted time was more than maim,
Green in dark hills, an emerald set in lead,
Of still perpetual seasons all the same,
Lost, set apart, a vision that was dead.
Meadows and meadows rising hill by hill
To mountains lonely as the tomb of Shem,
A lake, or dream, where even birds stood still
While horizontal lilies looked at them.
Oh, for a boat — ! or music from the shore
Of the dear world where time was always new!
Memory was only grief now; more and more
They sought each other — and this Hafiz knew.
Therefore, if sometimes slowly, tear by tear,
The past brimmed over in Gulcher'noos' eyes,
Young Beltar only strove to be more dear;
The sympathetic dwarfs, with mimic cries
Of muezzins as to prayer, assembled cranes
With reedy screams and preached the Prophet's laws
Shrilly from little pulpits built of canes
'Round which the birds would gawk with solemn pause.
Their knees bent backward, as if prayer
Reversed itself amid the faithful there.
But all their oratories swarmed with fish
Blue as the lake itself, and these the slave
Roasted as sweet as fasting saint could wish
Over the ruby coals before the cave;
And served at evening when the dying breeze
With shrill cicadas changed its daily tune
To moonlight cadences and harmonies
Accompanied by the bullfrogs' quaint bassoon.
Then by a dying fire beneath the stars
The slave regaled them with triumphant lies,
Such as the Arabs tell in cool bazaars,
And watched the pupils widen in their eyes.
The silent bats streamed outward from the cave
Like genii's smoke into the upper air
Until they thought it was the fisher's pot —
Even the story-teller stopped to stare —
Then told again of Gian Ben Gian's targe
And of the brother of the horse of brass,
Described the Simurgh by the river's marge,
And mimicked Balaam and his talking ass.
Long bows he drew, but to certain mark,
And long the tale was drawing to a close
With all eternity. . . . " But hark! Oh, hark!
Outside the bird of night exalts the rose. "
The dwarfs prepare the cabin for the night
With flowers under pillows for sweet dreams
Turn down the covers and retrim the light,
Tho' through the door the limpid moonlight streams.
Smooth are the boy and girl now in the deep
Of swan's down locked in one another's arms.
The manikins retire with prayers for sleep
And muttered gibberish of lucky charms.
Even the slave upon a camel's hide
Relaxed his sinewed limbs to long repose;
Down her white bowl the moon begins to glide;
The nightingale descanted to the rose.
The glowworm in the lily dimmed his spark;
The lake with little waves began to chime;
The stars like souls crept on from dark to dark
And in eternity recorded time.

Clear Rocknabad by Shiraz-town ,
Through mountain flowers slipping down,
From breezy peaks you take your way
And then meander for a day
Where lovers walk in Mosellay.
The oak and palm attend your state,
The willow and the bending date;
Down many a fresh, sequestered slope
Trips cautiously the antelope —
Before you bathe the city's gate —
He, bending to your cooling brim,
Beholds the lily look at him.
Then, muddied by the fisher's weir
And lost amid the Lake of Dreams,
You wander where the heron gleams,
But nevermore emerge the same,
Because the men who haunt the fen
Have called you by another name —
And Beirsebad drinks " Bandemir. "
Clear Rocknabad, flow lower down
And tell the zealots in the town,
Whose beards are not so very nice,
Who banquet on a bowl of rice —
Flow down to them and say:
" No saint of Beirsebad has had
A vision clear as Rocknabad;
There are no vales in Paradise
As cool as Mosellay. "