"Look on the face of the soul to whom Thou givest thy soul like added perfume! Thou, who heard'st me, who long had prayed, Waiting alone at evening's portal!-- Thus on thy lips let my lips be laid, Love, who hast made me all immortal! Give me thine arms now! Come and rest Happiness out on my beaming breast!"
Was it her soul? or the sapphire fire That sang like the note of a Seraph's lyre? Out of her mouth there came no word-- She spake with her soul, as a flower speaketh Fragrant messages none hath heard, Which the sense divines when the spirit seeketh.... And he seemed alone in a place so dim That the spirit's face, who was gazing at him, For its burning eyes he could not see: Then he knew he had died; that she and he Were one; and he saw that this was she.
Within the castle chamber The Norman knight lay dead; The quarterings of the casement Shone holy round his head.
And first there came a maiden; Her face was wet and white: She kissed his mouth and murmured, "Thou wast my own true knight."
Within the arrased chamber The Norman knight lay dead; And tapers four and twenty Burnt at his feet and head.
And next there came a friar And prayed beside the bier: "Thou art a blesséd angel, Who wast so noble here."
Within the lofty chamber The Norman knight lay dead; Dim through the carven casement The moonbeams lit his head.
And then there came a varlet-- Loud laughed he in his face: "Thus do I spit upon thee, Thee and thy curséd race!"
Within the silent chamber The Norman knight lay dead-- Nor Norman knight nor Saxon serf Heard aught the dead man said.
Among the tales, wherein it hath been told, In golden letters in a book of gold, Of Hatim Tai's hospitality, Who, substanceless and dead and shadowy, Made men his guests upon a mountain top Whereon his tomb grayed from a thistle crop;-- A tomb of rock where women, hewn of stone, Rude figures, spread dishevelled hair, whose moan From dark to daybreak made the silence sigh, At which the camel-drivers, tented nigh, "Ghouls or hyenas" shuddering would say, But only granite women find at day:-- Among such tales--who questions of their truth?-- One tale still haunts me from my earliest youth; Of that lost city, Sheddad son of Aad Built 'mid the Sebaa sands,--a king who had Dominion over many lands and kings,-- That city, built in pride and pow'r, of things Unstable of the earth. For he had read Of Paradise and to himself had said, "Now in this life the like of Paradise I'll build me and the Prophet's may despise, Having no need of that he promises." So for this city taxed the lands and seas, And columned Irem, on a blinding height, Blazed in the desert like a chrysolite; The manner of its building, it is told, Alternate bricks of silver and of gold. But Sheddad with his women and his slaves, His thousand viziers, armored troops, as waves Of ocean countless, God with awful flame-- Shot sheer in thunder on him--overcame, Confounded, and abolished; (ere his eyes Had glimpsed bright follies of that paradise) And blotted to a wilderness the land Wherein accursed it lies and lost in sand.-- Sad tales and glad; and 'mid them one, in sooth, That is recorded of an Arab youth.