Canto 10Canto I - The Story of Almaimun and the Emir’s Daughter
Book 2. Part Two - Baroda Circa 1898 – 1902
CANTO I
The Story of Almaimun and the Emir’s Daughter1
Now in great Bagdad of the Abbasside
The wanderer rests, to peace at last allied,
5Whom storm so long had tossed to storm; and grace
Of love dwelt with him and the nobleness
Of hearts made golden by felicity,
Which is earth’s preferable alchemy.
For other is from pain the metal wrought,
10Anguish and wrestling in the coils of thought.
These strengthen, these the mind as marble hard
Make and as marble pure, which has not feared
To scourge itself with insight; but the stress
Of joy heightened to self-forgetfulness
15Is sweeter and to sweeter uses tends.
With such felicity were crowned the friends
And lovers of Almaimun and increase
In the glad strength that grows from boundless peace.
And each as to her orb the sunflower burns
20His spirit to his spirit’s image turns.
Such puissance great well-pois`ed natures prove
To mould to their own likeness all they love.
But where is she who lit his doubtful morn,
Whose sweet imagined shape each hour new-born
25Brightened but to illumine, kindled each
Stray look with godhead and her daily speech
A far ethereal music made, for whom
He sought the wild waves and the peopled gloom
Of the unseen? Must only she make moan?
30She in the crowded chambers is alone
And closes eyes kept dry by anguished pride
To wake in tears that hardly will be dried.
Happy the heart and more than earthly blest
That for those hands was meant where ’tis possessed,
351 Here Sri Aurobindo altered the name “Alnuman” to “Almaimun”. — Ed.
Khaled of the Sea
That to no alien house at the end has come
But winging goes as to its natural home.
The evening bird with no more simple flight
40Reaches its one unfailing nest at night.
The heart which Fate not always here perverse
With the one possible home out of an universe,
Makes simply happy there secure shall dwell,
Feeling that to be there is only well.
45And equal happy whether queenly chair
Her portion or she kneel loose-girdled there
And serve him as a slave. Alike ’tis heaven,
Rule or obedience to the one heart given.
So did not bright Zuleikha deem when she
50The temple was of his idolatry.
Impatient of divine subjection, all
Love’s wealth was to her grace imperial
Purple and diadems and earth’s noblest gift
But vantage her disdainful pride to lift.
55She was an Emir’s daughter and her sire
Clothed her in jewels and sublime attire,
From silver dishes fed and emerald
And in a world of delicate air installed
So that her nature with these costly things
60Being burdened raised in vain its heavenward wings.
From Koraish and the Abbasside he drew
His stern extraction. Yet what brighter grew
About his formidable name accursed
Was a white fire of riches and the thirst
65Of poor men gazing with a bitter stealth
On that impossibility of wealth.
“Abdullah the Emir,” so men would say
Drawing their rags about them, “has display
Of gold and silver and the sunlight fades
70At noon in his wide treasury and the shades
Of midnight are more luminous there than birth
Of day upon the ordinary earth.
He has rich garments, would the naked clothe
Baroda, c. 1898–1902
75From Bagdad to the sea, were he not loth:
The leavings of his menials far exceed
In Khorassan the labourer’s sharpened need.
And since by thee this fair display was planned,
O God, yet from the beggar’s outstretched hand
80He guards his boundless trust ignobly well,
Just Lord, display to him the fires of Hell.”
And here another pressing from his eye
His children’s pining looks, made sad reply.
“Richer his wealth than widest chambers hold,
85Not in the weary heaps of ingots told
Entirely, nor the cloths Damascus yields,
Nor what the seas give up, nor what the fields.
He gathers ever with exhaustless hands:
His camels heave across the endless sands.
90Through Balkh when to Caboul or Candahar
The wains go groaning or the evening star
Watches the pomp of the wide caravan
Intend to provinces Arabian,
Half is Abdullah the Emir’s: and he
95Gets spices of the south and porphyry:
His are the Chinese silks, the Indian work
Saved hardly from the horsehooves of the Turk:
From Balsora the ships that o’er the bar
Reel into Ocean’s grasp, Abdullah’s are;
100Yemen’s far ports are with his ventures full;
Muscat transmits him horses, arms and wool.
The desert rider hopes no richer prize
To handle than Abdullah’s merchandize;
With joy the Malayan sea-robber hails
105His argosy and for his western sails
The Moorish pirates all the horizon scan
Upon the far Mediterranean.
Yet though his losses make the desert great
And Ocean a new treasury create
110From his sole rapine, yet untouched endure
His riches by that vast expenditure.
Khaled of the Sea
He takes but to increase his piles of gold,
He gives but to recover hundredfold.
115Thereby the poor increase. Wherefore I trust,
When Azrael shall smite his limbs to dust
And he upon that dolorous bridge is led
Which, lord and peasant, all must one day tread,
The bitter sword that spans the nether hell,
120He may be evened with the infidel.”
And one might answer mid these wretched men
Who quiet was from constancy to pain;
“Curse him not either lest the Kazi find
And God loose not the chains that he shall bind.”
125For he indeed was mighty in the town,
A man acceptable in his renown;
The mullahs to his will interpreted
Their books and the law’s lightning from his head
Glanced on the rash accuser; for his word
130Was H´edoya before the Kazi heard.
But whence the fountain of his wealth might flow,
Well did the sad and toiling peasant know.
For he as governor in Khorassan
Had held the balance betwixt man and man
135And justified his rule benevolent
By rape and torture for their own good meant,
The fallen rooftree and the broken door
And rents wrung from the miserable poor.
And now hemmed in with lustrous things and proud,
140Each day a pomp, each night with music loud,
He blazed, however his eye a darkness cast
And pleasure by his sense external passed.
Yet joy he had over his gathered gold
And in that one sweet maiden joy untold.
145Daughter of Noureddin the Barmecide
Was she who bore this brightness, but when died
Jaafar and all his house fell like a tower
Loosened in the mutation of an hour,
Abdullah found his foe an outlawed man,
150Baroda, c. 1898–1902
Proscribed, a heretic and Persian
And slew him with the sword juridical
Between his golden house and Allah’s wall.