An Aged Minstrel

Taut is the air and tied the trees,The leaves lie as on a hand;God’s unthinkable imaginationInvents new tortures for nature.

And when the air is soft and the leavesFeel free and push and tremble,Will they not remember and sayHow wonderful to have lived?

Messiah, Messiah.... That voice....O, he has beaten my sight out.... I seeLike a rain about a devouring fire....

Ye who best God awhile, O hear: your wealthIs but His cunning to see to make death more hard,Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking;And he has made the market for your beautyToo poor to buy although you die to sell.

The scratchiness of your whining; or, may be,Thence may be born deep argumentWith reasons from philosophy,That this blow, taking longer, yet was but one,Or perhaps two; or that you felt this one—Arguing from the difference in your whine—Exactly, or not, like the other.

Harper, are you envious of the old fool?Go! Hug the rat who stole your last crumbs,And gnawed the hole in your life which made time wonderWho it was saved labour for him the next score of years.We allowed them life for their labour—they haggled.Food they must have, and (god of laughter!) even ease;But mud and lice and Jews are very busyBreeding plagues in ease.

When a man’s drunk he’ll kiss a horse or king,He’s so affectionate. Under your wordsThere is strong wine to make me drunk; you think,The lines of all your face say, “Her father, Koelue’s father.”

This is too droll and extraordinary.I dreamt I was a prince—a queer droll dreamWhere a certain slave of mine, a thing, a toad,Shifting his belly, showed a diamondWhere he had lain; and a blind dumb messengerBore syllabled messages soaked right through with glee:I paid the toad, the blind man; afterwardsThey spread a stench and snarling. O, droll dream!

I think you merely mean to flatter me,You subtle knave, that, more than prince, I’m manAnd worth to listen to your bawdy breath.

Osiris! Burning Osiris!Of thee desirable, for thee, her hair....

Prince Imra vowed his honey-hives and vineyards:Isis, to let a Jew have her for nothing!

Night by night in a little houseA man and woman meet;They look like each other,They are sister and brother;And night by night at that same hourA king calls for his son in vain.

I’m drunk, yes—drenched with the thoughtOf a certain thing. [Aside.] I’ll sleep sounder to-nightThan all the nights I’ve followed him aboutWorrying each slight clue, each monosyllableTo give the word to Imra: the prince is near,And Moses’ eyes shall blink before next hourTo a hundred javelins. I’ll tease him till they come.Of her sighs I hung round you;As in some hallucination I’ve been walkingA white waste world, we two only in it.

Doubtless the instinct balked to bully the girl,Making large gapings in your haschish dreams,

Led you to me in whom she was thoroughly lost.Pah, you sicken me!

I hate these family quarrels: it is soLike fratricide. I am a rebel, well?Soft! You are not, and we are knit so closeIt would be shame for a son to be so honouredAnd the father still unknown: come, Koelue’s (so my) father,I’ll tell my plans—you’ll beg to be rebel then.Look round on the night—Old as the first, bleak, even her wish is done;She has never seen, though dreamt perhaps of the sun,Yet only dawn divides; could a miracle

Destroy the dawn, night would be mixed with light,No night or light would be, but a new thing:So with these slaves, who perhaps have dreamt of freedom,Egypt was in the way; I’ll strike it outWith my ways curious and unusual.I have a trouble in my mind for largeness,Rough-hearted, shaggy, which your grave ardours lack:Here is the quarry quiet for me to hew;Here are the springs, primeval elements,The roots’ hid secrecy, old source of race,Unreasoned reason of the savage instinct.I’d shape one impulse through the contrariesOf vain ambitious men, selfish and callous,And frail life-drifters, reticent, delicate—Litheness thread bulk, a nation’s harmony:These are not lame nor bent awry, but placelessWith the rust and stagnant. All that’s low I’ll charm,Barbaric love sweeten to tenderness,Cunning run into wisdom, craft turn to skill;Their meanness, threaded right and sensibly,Change to a prudence envied and not sneered;Their hugeness be a driving wedge to a thing

Ineffable and useable, as nearSolidity as human life can be:So grandly fashion these rude elementsInto some newer nature, a consciousnessLike naked light seizing the all-eyed soul,Oppressing with its gorgeous tyrannyUntil they take it thus—or die.