azade's tales.

Lips as red as pomegranates
And a curved nose lily white,
Limbs as slender and as cool
As some green oasis-palm.

From her palfrey white she leaned,
Flanked by giant Moors who trod
Close beside the queenly dame
Holding up the golden reins.

Of most royal blood was she,
She the Queen of old Judea,
She great Herod's lovely wife,
She who craved the Baptist's head.

For this crimson crime was she
Banned and cursed. Now in this chase
Must she ride, a wandering spook,
Till the dawn of Judgment Day.

Still within her hands she bears
That deep charger with the head
Of the Prophet, still she kisses--
Kisses it with fiery lips.

For she loved the Prophet once,
Though the Bible naught reveals,
Yet her blood-stained love lives on
Storied in her people's hearts.

How might else a man declare
All the longing of this lady?
Would a woman crave the head
Of a man she did not love?

She perchance was slightly vexed
With her darling, and was moved
To behead him, but when she
On the trencher saw his head,

Then she wept and lost her wits,
Dying in love's madness straight.
(What! Love's madness? pleonasm!
Love itself is madness still!)

Rising nightly from her grave,
To this frenzied hunt she hies,
In her hands the gory head
Which with feline joy she flings

High into the air betimes,
Laughing like a wanton child,
Cleverly she catches it
Like some idle rubber ball.

As she swept past me she bowed
Most coquettishly and looked
On me with her melting eyes,
So that all my heart was stirred.

Thrice that rout raged up and down
Past my window, then did she,
Ah, most beautiful of shades!
Greet me with her precious smile.

Even when the pageant dimmed
And the tumult silent grew
In my brain, that smiling face
Shone and beckoned on and on.

All that night I tossed and turned
My o'erwearied limbs on straw,
Musty straw. No feather-beds
In Uraka's hut I found!

And I mused: what might this mean,
This mysterious beckoning?
Why, Oh, why, Herodias,
Held thy look such tenderness?

[Illustration]

CANTO XX

Sunrise. Golden arrows dart
Through the pall