A PRE-EXISTENCE.

An intimation of some previous life,

Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined,

Of some uncertain sleep — or lived or dreamed

In some dead life — between a dusk and dawn;

From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,

Far off defined, his corselet and camail,

Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's

Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one

Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught

A cry before him and a wail behind,

Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings;

Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,

Housed near the Tagus — squalid and alone

Save for his slave, held dear — to beat and starve —

Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,

A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones

A visible hunger; famished with the fear,

Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him — I, who held

Him soul and self, more hated than his God,

Stood silent; fools had laughed; I saw my way.

War-time crops weapons; and the blade I bought

Was subtly pointed. For, I knew his ways:

The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems

And bags of doublas — oh, I knew his ways.

A shadow, woven in the hangings, hid

Till time said now; gaunt from the hangings stole

Behind him; humped and stooping so, his heart

Clove through the faded tunic, murrey-dyed;

Grinned exultation while the grim, slow blood

Drenched black and darkened round the oblong wound,

And his old face thinned grayer than morn's moon.

Rubies from Badakhshan in rose lights dripped

Slim tears of poppy-purple crystal; dull,

Red, ember-pregnant, carbuncles wherein

Fevered a captive crimson; bugles wan

Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds

With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains

Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts;

Fire-opals savage and mesmeric with

Voluptuous flame, long, sweet, and sensuous as

Soft eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed

With talismanic violet, from tombs,

Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans;

Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of

Golconda — This, a sandaled dervise bare

Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun,

Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon,

Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held

Of some wild tribe.... Bleached in the perishing waste

A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones,

A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull

One blazing eye — the diamond. At Aleppo

Bartered — a bauble for his desert love.—

Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem jolting gem,

Flashed, rutilating in the irised light,

A rain of splintered fire; and his head,

Long-haired, white-sunk among them.

Yet I took

All — though his eyes burned in them; though, meseemed,

Each several jewel glared a separate curse....

Well! dead men work us mischief from the grave.

Richer than all Castile and yet not dare

Drink but from cups of Roman murra, spar

Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold! spar sensitive

Of poison! I, no slave, yet all a slave

To fear a dead fool's malice!— Still, how else!

Feasting within the music of my halls,

While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes,

Diaphanous, more silken than those famed

Of loomed Amorgos or of classic Kos,

Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed,

Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolfsbane-slain!