And grimly smiling as he grimly passed, "While Allah's glory is and still shall last-- Now by Es Sirat!--will a leper's word And thief's avail to help us?--By my sword!-- Yea, let us see. Whatever their intent Even as 'tis offered let their necks be bent! 'Though words be pious, evil at the soul The prayer is naught!--So let their prayer be whole. Better than gold is death, meseems, for these: So by the hands of you, my Soudanese, They die," he said; and even as he said Rolled in the dust each writhing, withered head.
And frowning westward, as the day grew late, Two bleeding heads stared from the city gate 'Neath this inscription for the passer-by, "There is no virtue but in God most high."
Beneath great saffron stars and skies, dark-blue, Among the Cyclades, a happy two, We sailed; and from the Siren-haunted shore, All mystic in its mist, the soft wind bore The Siren's song; where, on the ghostly steeps, Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps, That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud, Blue-petaled, pallid, or, like urns of blood, Dripping; or blowing from wide mouths of blooms On our hot brows cool gales of dim perfumes. While from the yellow stars, that splashed the skies, O'er our light shallop brooded mysteries Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon Rose, full of fire, above a dark lagoon; And, as she rose, the nightingales, on sprays Of heavy, Persian roses, burst in praise Of her wild loveliness; their boisterous pain Heard through the pillars of a ruined fane. And round our lazy keel, that dipped to swing, The spirits of the foam came whispering; And from gray Neptune's coral-columned caves The wet Oceänids rose through the waves; With naked limbs we saw them breast the spray, Their pearl-white bodies tempesting the way; Their sea-green hair, tossed streaming to the breeze, Scattering with brightness all the tumbled seas. 'Mid columned aisles, seen vaguely through the trees, We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades; Heard Pan's shrill trebles and the Triton's horn Sound from the flying foam when ruddy Morn, With dewy eyelids, opened azure eyes, And, blushing, rose, and left her couch of skies. We saw the Naiad, clothed with veiling mist, Half hidden in a bay of amethyst, With shell-like breasts, and at her hollow ear A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear Circean echoes of the Siren's strains Imprisoned in its chords of vermeil veins: Then, stealing wily from a grove of pines, The Oread, in cincture of green vines; Her cautious feet, fragrant and twinkling wet, Set in a bed of rainy serpolet; Her flower-red lips half-parted in surprise, And expectation in her wondering eyes, As in the bosk a rustling noise she hears-- A Faun, sly-eyed, with furred and pointed ears, Who leaps upon her, as upon a dove A great hawk pinions from the skies above. Diana sees, and on her wooded hills Stays her fair band, the stag-hounds' clamor stills-- A senseless statue of cold, weeping stone Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone. The stag-hounds bay; again they urge the chase, While the astonished Faun's bewildered face Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering, He bends above the sculpture of a spring.