I was—how many a time!— That Second Calendar, Son of a King, On whom ’twas vehemently enjoined, Pausing at one mysterious door, To pry no closer, but content his soul With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest For idleness and ungovernable Fate. And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame (That wonder-working word!), Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans, And soaring, soaring on From air to air, came charging to the ground Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds, And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled Flicked at me with his tail, And left me blinded, miserable, distraught (Even as I was in deed, When doctors came, and odious things were done On my poor tortured eyes With lancets; or some evil acid stung And wrung them like hot sand, And desperately from room to room Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way), To get to Bagdad how I might. But there I met with Merry Ladies. O you three— Safie, Amine, Zobëidé—when my heart Forgets you all shall be forgot! And so we supped, we and the rest, On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates, Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And Haroun Laughed out of his lordly beard On Giaffar and Mesrour (_I_ knew the Three For all their Mossoul habits). And outside The Tigris, flowing swift Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars; The vast, blue night Was murmurous with peris’ plumes And the leathern wings of genies; words of power Were whispering; and old fishermen, Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales Worth in the Caliph’s Kitchen pieces of gold: Or copper vessels, stopped with lead, Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed, In durance under potent charactry Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .
Then, as the Book was glassed In Life as in some olden mirror’s quaint, Bewildering angles, so would Life Flash light on light back on the Book; and both Were changed. Once in a house decayed From better days, harbouring an errant show (For all its stories of dry-rot Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax, Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), I wandered; and no living soul Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared Upon them staring—staring. Till at last, Three sets of rafters from the streets, I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room, With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene, Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set, Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, With an aspect of frills And dimities and dishonoured privacy That made you hanker and hesitate to look, A Woman with her litter of Babes—all slain, All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes Staring—still staring; so that I turned and ran As for my neck, but in the street Took breath. The same, it seemed, And yet not all the same, I was to find, As I went up! For afterwards, Whenas I went my round alone— All day alone—in long, stern, silent streets, Where I might stretch my hand and take Whatever I would: still there were Shapes of Stone, Motionless, lifelike, frightening—for the Wrath Had smitten them; but they watched, This by her melons and figs, that by his rings And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze, The Painted Eyes insufferable, Now, of those grisly images; and I Pursued my best-belovéd quest, Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear. So the night fell—with never a lamplighter; And through the Palace of the King I groped among the echoes, and I felt That they were there, Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes, Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far A Voice! And in a little while Two tapers burning! And the Voice, Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was—whose? Whose but Zobëidé’s, The lady of my heart, like me A True Believer, and like me An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .