| Were some dear cheek. |
|
|
|
|
| Upon a moonless night |
| I sat where I could watch her sleeping form, |
| And wrote
by candle-light; but her form moved, |
| And fearing that my light disturbed her sleep |
| I rose that I might
screen it with a cloth. |
| I heard her voice, ‘Turn that I may expound |
| What’s bowed your shoulder and
made pale your cheek’; |
| And saw her sitting upright on the bed; |
| Or was it she that spoke or some great
Djinn? |
| I say that a Djinn spoke. A live-long hour |
| She seemed the learned man and I the child; |
| Truths
without father came, truths that no book |
| Of all the uncounted books that I have read, |
| Nor thought out
of her mind or mine begot, |
| Self-born, high-born, and solitary truths, |
| Those terrible implacable straight
lines |
| Drawn through the wandering vegetative dream, |
| Even those truths that when my bones are dust |
| Must drive the Arabian host. |
|
|
|
|
| The voice grew still, |
| And she lay down upon her bed and slept, |
| But woke
at the first gleam of day, rose up |
| And swept the house and sang about her work |
| In childish ignorance
of all that passed. |
| A dozen nights of natural sleep, and then |
| When the full moon swam to its greatest
height |
| She rose, and with her eyes shut fast in sleep |
| Walked through the house. Unnoticed and unfelt |
| I
wrapped her in a hooded cloak, and she, |
| Half running, dropped at the first ridge of the desert |
| And there
marked out those emblems on the sand |
| That day by day I study and marvel at, |
| With her white finger.
I led her home asleep |
| And once again she rose and swept the house |
| In childish ignorance of all that
passed. |
| Even to-day, after some seven years |
| When maybe thrice in every moon her mouth |
| Murmured
the wisdom of the desert Djinns, |
| She keeps that ignorance, nor has she now |
| That first unnatural interest
in my books. |
| It seems enough that I am there; and yet, |
| Old fellow-student, whose most patient ear |
| Heard
all the anxiety of my passionate youth, |
| It seems I must buy knowledge with my peace. |
| What if she lose
her ignorance and so |
| Dream that I love her only for the voice, |
| That every gift and every word of praise |
| Is but a payment for that midnight voice |
| That is to age what milk is to a child? |
| Were she to lose her
love, because she had lost |
| Her confidence in mine, or even lose |
| Its first simplicity, love, voice and all, |
| All
my fine feathers would be plucked away |
| And I left shivering. The voice has drawn |
| A quality of wisdom
from her love’s |
| Particular quality. The signs and shapes; |
| All those abstractions that you fancied were |
| From the great Treatise of Parmenides; |
| All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things |
| Are but a
new expression of her body |
| Drunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth. |
| And now my utmost mystery
is out. |
| A woman’s beauty is a storm-tossed banner; |
| Under it wisdom stands, and I alone— |
| Of all Arabia’s
lovers I alone— |
| Nor dazzled by the embroidery, nor lost |
| In the confusion of its night-dark folds, |
| Can
hear the armed man speak. |
