Classic Poem

It was the king of the East, they say, who bought
A slave-girl in the market of Baghdad.
The merchants brought her thither, travelling
A long way southward, from the wrinkled hills
Of Georgia and sold her for a price.
It was the king who saw her, as he passed
At midday through the hot and narrow streets,
And asked what sum they set on her. They told him.
He bade his purse-bearer count out the coins
And bring her home. But when he saw her first
Among the fountains and the misty leaves
In the cool garden of his golden house,
He loved her.


She would dance for his delight
And when she entertained him thus, he stared,
Stupid with pleasure. She was young and nimble,
With subtly moving wrists of ivory
And ankles finer and stronger than graven steel.
She was the blossoming bough that stirs in spring,
The pearl-white clouds that drift across blue heaven,
The rainbowed wave that dies in colour on
A sunny shore, the wheeling flight of birds
Hardly descried against a dusky wood,
The arrowy darting fish in quiet brooks;
All the earth's myriad movements lay in her.
The king sat in his jewelled seat and saw
With deep, fixed eyes her motions flash and blend
In convolutions of the astounding dance,
And ever when she paused he signed her on,
Silently staring.


She danced all through the night,
Now in slow measure mimed the rising moon,
And now in a frenzy of light and hurrying steps
The scattered and stricken clouds that fly in shreds
Across the face of the moon and are lost in night
And die in bitter space for love of the moon.
Still with his grave deep eyes the king applauded,
Silently nodding, and when she paused for rest,
He raised his great arm up and with hairy fingers
Urged her to dancing. Dark lines beneath her eyes
And sharp lines at the corners of her mouth
Grew as night grew and weariness invaded
Even her limbs of pearl and steel. She wept
Small and infrequent tears of pain, hard wrung
From a brave heart and body. Still she danced
And when dawn shot his blood-red flames across
The shimmering fountains and drowned the garden in gold,
She sank in a last, triumphant attitude,
Her bosom open to the rising sun.

So the king loved her and he built for her
A bright pavilion hidden in high trees
And there at night he came to visit her,
Without his retinue. Two Nubian soldiers
Alone attended him to ward away
The attempts of the wicked and remained on guard
While he was in. So when his pleasure bade,
He came to her and watched her maddening dance
Or took her on his knees and fondled her
And praised her lovely body of pearl and steel
With silent glances and silent straying hands,
Her body that was, so often as she danced,
A flickering flame, an insubstantial wreath
Of linked movements.


But he came one night
Through the black shadows of the mighty trees,
Black and immense beneath the risen moon,
Unseen, unheard. The negroes crept behind,
Blotted in shade. He picked his way to the gate
And through the filigree of coiled gold
He saw her little garden full of light,
Wherein she danced alone and not for him,
But with her moonwhite arms to the risen moon
She offered her beauty and her sacred steps.
An hour he stood unmoving; an hour she moved
In measures of unbelievable loveliness,
A phantasy of night, the essential wraith
Of the moon, as though the light that filled the place
Were thicker at the centre and there took
A bodily shape and grew to be a woman,
That danced and danced for silence and the moon.
But when the light was gone, he turned away
And sought his negroes in the deeper shadow.
They came to him, darkness in darkness disguised;
He drew them close and spoke in a low still voice,
And, pointing with his hand to the pavilion,
Commanded: Let the woman's ankles be broken.