We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage
And swear that beauty lives though lilies die,
We Poets of a proud old lineage
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why, —
What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales
Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest,
Where nevermore the rose of sunset pales,
And winds and shadows fall toward the West:
And there the world's first huge white-bearded kings
In dim glades sleeping, murmur in their sleep,
And closer round their breasts the ivy clings,
Cutting its pathway slow and red and deep.
II
And how beguile you? Death has no repose
Warmer and deeper than that Orient sand
Which hides the beauty and bright faith of those
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
And now they wait and whiten peaceably,
Those conquerors, those poets, those so fair:
They know time comes, not only you and I,
But the whole world shall whiten, here or there;
When those long caravans that cross the plain
With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells
Put forth no more for glory or for gain,
Take no more solace from the palm-girt wells.
When the great markets by the sea shut fast
THE MERCHANTS (together)
Away, for we are ready to a man!
THE CHIEF DRAPER
Have we not Indian carpets dark as wine,
THE CHIEF GROCER
We have rose-candy, we have spikenard,
THE PRINCIPAL JEWS
And we have manuscripts in peacock styles
THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN
But you are nothing but a lot of Jews.
THE PRINCIPAL JEWS
Sir, even dogs have daylight, and we pay.
THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN
But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes,
THE PILGRIMS
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
THE CHIEF MERCHANT
We gnaw the nail of hurry. Master, away!
ONE OF THE WOMEN
O turn your eyes to where your children stand.
THE MERCHANTS (in chorus)
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
AN OLD MAN
Have you not girls and garlands in your homes,
THE MERCHANTS (in chorus)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
A PILGRIM WITH A BEAUTIFUL VOICE
Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
A MERCHANT
We travel not for trafficking alone:
THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN
Open the gate, O watchman of the night!
THE WATCHMAN
Ho, travellers, I open. For what land
THE MERCHANTS (in chorus)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
[The Caravan passes through the gate]
THE WATCHMAN (consoling the women)
What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.
A WOMAN
They have their dreams, and do not think of us.
VOICES OF THE CARAVAN (in the distance, singing)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
I care not if you bridge the seas,
But have you wine and music still,
How shall we conquer? Like a wind
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Since I can never see your face,
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last
And earth is but a star, that once had shone.
The golden journey to Samarkand
[At the Gate of the Sun, Baghdad, in olden time]
Our camels sniff the evening and are glad.
Lead on, O Master of the Caravan:
Lead on the Merchant-Princes of Baghdad.
Turbans and sashes, gowns and bows and veils,
And broideries of intricate design,
And printed hangings in enormous bales?
Mastic and terebinth and oil and spice,
And such sweet jams meticulously jarred
As God's own Prophet eats in Paradise.
By Ali of Damascus; we have swords
Engraved with storks and apes and crocodiles,
And heavy beaten necklaces, for Lords.
You dirty-bearded, blocking up the way?
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
Is not Baghdad the beautiful? O stay!
Eunuches and Syrian boys at your command?
Seek not excess: God hateth him who roams!
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
Leave you the dim-moon city of delight?
Men are unwise and curiously planned.
To a poet a thousand years hence
I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Mæonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.