Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, KAMAL OF ISFAHAN, by ALLAN UPDEGRAFF


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

KAMAL OF ISFAHAN, by                    
First Line: So still he sat, and watched the end of day
Last Line: And morning sprent the sky with rose-leaf light.
Subject(s): Yale University


So still he sat, and watched the end of day
Fade, like an angel's smile, away.
So breathed he deep, and stared into the bays
Where clouds hung at their starry quays.
And every distant, scintillant hint of fire
Rhymed with his heart's desire;
And every meteor, red-tinged of hell,
Screamed, Azyavel!

Could I but crush her mouth with mine, he said,
Till the lips dripped red!
Could I but bend her body's sinuous grace
To one love-mad embrace!
Too rare her lips, he said, for the poor king,
And her deep bosom's bourgeoning;
Though she be his, and all her glories' dower,
Can such a moth suck such a passion-flower?
So is the fool less happy even than I
Whose soul has cried the exceeding bitter cry;
Whose heart, long immolate on her beauty's pyre,
Her hair enmeshes round like white-hot wire!

The nightingale, he sang, bleeds for the rose;
His breast impaled upon her cruellest thorn,
He sings till morn;
And this his torture -- not his breast all torn:
To breathe the fragrance that abroad she blows
To all alike, unheeding of his throes,
And death-singing!
Oh, this his torture: that she never knows,
And cannot know, and cannot know,
His life-blood ebbing throe on throe,
And death-singing!

From the embrasure of a broken cloud
Looked Ramazan's wan moon on Kamal bowed;
Lit Ramazan's wan moon a gray-burnt land,
And one crouched figure in the wastes of land.

And shadows marked the lonely watcher's place,
And crawled, 'neath clouds, across the desert's face;

And where the purple edge of dark began,
Buttressed the ghostly walls of Isfahan.

A sudden shape, whose gray the moon made white,
Grew from the gradual night;
And straight and swift o'er-slipped the noiseless sand,
As one full-planned;

And neared the bowed man, and went slow, more slow,
And stealthily as wild things go;
Then crept upon him, caught with short, fierce cries
His head and throat, and covered mouth and eyes.
Kill then! he gasped. Strike home! and
God approve!
Came the quick answer: Nay, not death -- but love!

And swooned away the purple-pulsed night,
And morning sprent the sky with rose-leaf light.





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