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قراءة كتاب Poems of West & East
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court with wooden balconies,
And wool hung out to dry in gaudy skeins,
A fountain, and some pigeons murmuringly
Picking up yellow grains.
Pass through a little tumble-down green door
Into the dark and crowded shop; the Turk
Crouching above the brasier, smiles and nods;
'Tis all his daily work.
Here marble heads and alabaster jars,
Fragments of porphyry and Persian tiles,
Lie heaped in ruin, and at our dismay
The old Turk shrugs and smiles,
And sips his coffee, reaching out a hand
To throw upon the brasier at his feet
A handful of dried herbs, whose sudden smoke
Rises up incense-sweet.
YANGHIN VAR*
AS the baying of wolves from afar,
Borne on the wind from the Golden Horn
A cry in the distance, long-drawn,
"Yanghin var! yanghin var!"
Suddenly waking the silent night,
Suddenly breaking the sleeping calm,
The long, far, wailing alarm,
And the watch-tower startles a warning light.
As a torch passed from hand to hand,
As a beacon springing from hill to hill,
The cry draws nearer though distant still,
And the watch throws it on from stand to stand,
And the voices rise as a tempest far,
As the swell of waves on a rocky shore,
Each rumbles louder than before,
"Yanghin var! yanghin var!"
And as the angel's unpausing feet,
The angel bearing the wrath of the Lord,
The angel bearing the flaming sword,
The voice passes onward below in the street.
Faintly it travels again from afar,
And as an echo of terror past
The wind from the Bosphorus bears the last
Yanghin var. …
* Fire!
MORNING IN CONSTANTINOPLE
SHE has an early morning of her own,
A blending of the mist and sea and sun
Into an undistinguishable one,
And Saint Sophia, from her lordly throne
Rises above the opalescent cloud,
A shadowy dome and soaring minaret
Visable though the base be hidden yet
Beneath the veiling wreaths of milky shroud,
As some dark Turkish beauty haughtily
Glances above the yashmak's snowy fold.
—Beyond Stamboul's long stretch, a bar of gold
Falls from the sun across the distant sea.
RETOUR EN SONGE
AFTER a dream-dim voyage
We came with sails all set
Towards the city of the sea,
And it was wonderful to me
To find her reigning yet.
Oh beauty that my eyes and heart
Had feasted on before!
The evening mosques were brushed with gold,
The water lapped a lazy fold
Upon that lovely shore;
The gardens of her terraced hills
Rose up above the port,
And little houses half concealed
The presence of a light revealed,
And here my journey's end was sealed,
And I reached the home I sought.
Those windows I had opened wide
To welcome in the sun!
Those stairs that only happy feet
Had measured with their running beat!
That well-remembered winding street!
Twelve months that were as one!
Should others with their sordid cares
And troubles enter here?
Love hung about the rooms like smoke,
And peace descended as a cloak,
Should I allow the vulgar folk
To desecrate that year?
—I laid the fuse with steady hand;
We sailed into the night,
From deck I watched the flames arise
Remorseless as my tearless eyes
That, with the waves and reddened skies,
Flung back the angry light.
CONSTANTINOPLE, MARCH MCMXV
I
QUEEN of a double empire still she stands,
And watches with superb indifferent eyes
The eager wooing of Imperial hands
Towards so fair and coveted a prize.
Royal and imperial suitors has she known
Pass one by one across her dreaming years,
And some a while have climbed the golden throne,
And some have passed away in blood and tears;
For many emperors have sought her grace
Since the first Constantine in sweeping cloak
Her seven hills with broad unhurrying pace
Measured, and rested not till Heaven spoke.
A haughty fatalist Byzantium waits
What chance the storing centuries bring forth:
Another lover almost at the gates,
Heralded by the cannon of the North,
A Northern King to wed the Eastern Queen,
An iron clasp to set the shining gem,
Thrice-changed Constantinople to be seen
The Jewel of a Russian diadem!
II
O Saint Sophia, where the footstep falls
Softly beneath the roofs of burnished gold,
Shields of the Caliphs hang upon thy walls,
Brand of bereaved dishonour ages old.
His charger raised on Christian corpses high,
—O ravished bride of Christianity!—
Here struck Mahomet's hand as he rode by,
And seared the lustre of the porphyry,
And, interrupted in the sacred feast,
Hearing the advent of the conqueror surge,
Into the wall miraculous the priest
Entered, and waits the summons to emerge.
So on that high and ceremonial day
When Russian Czar and prince, and Christian lord
Throng Saint Sophia in their packed array
To see the church's heritage restored,
When from mosaics re-established saints
Look down once more upon a Christian crowd,
And Echo startles into life, and faints
With rapture at Gregorian chanting loud,
And Mass magnificently moving on
Towards its climax, brings the moment near
After the lapse of many centuries gone
For Christ in priestly hands to reappear,
When the exultant organ's chord has ceased
And every head is bowed expectantly,
—Then at the altar the Byzantine priest
Shall hold aloft the Host triumphantly!
RESOLUTION
I SEE the work of others, and my heart
Sinks as my own achievement I compare.
—I will not be irresolute, nor despair,
But battle strongly for my struggling art
Convinced against conviction that my part
Equally with my masters I can bear;
Although their monuments are very fair,
Enriched with statues, and I stand apart
And gaze upon my little heap of stones
Which I was given to build with, very few
As yet laid into place, but I will lay
—Blind to these marble monuments and thrones,
Building as though I confidently knew
My ultimate end,—a stone in place each day.
END