The Gift Of Harun Al-rashid Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCEFGGHIJKLMNLOPQ RSCTLUNVLMGWXYMZGA2L B2GWC2LD2E2LLLF2LZLL G2ZZH2JD2I2GLJ2K2LJ2 L2ZLGM2VAKIZN2O2P2J2 Q2LCR2J2YZJ2LLJ2AYZS 2T2LU2ZV2LAV2W2O2X2Y 2ZZ2A3B3O2KRGC3D3V2A D3GE3F3G3LLH3D3O2LI3 J3O2AK3L3M3N3O3O2P3Z 2CQ3O2P3K2LLF3R3S3A3 T3U3O2RZ2AM3AGAAAM3L ALY2LZ2LAV3VLLLLLAAL W3JZ2LLAKUSTA BEN LUKA is my name I write | A |
To Abd Al Rabban fellow roysterer once | B |
Now the good Caliph's learned Treasurer | C |
And for no ear but his | D |
Carry this letter | C |
Through the great gallery of the Treasure House | E |
Where banners of the Caliphs hang night coloured | F |
But brilliant as the night's embroidery | G |
And wait war's music pass the little gallery | G |
Pass books of learning from Byzantium | H |
Written in gold upon a purple stain | I |
And pause at last I was about to say | J |
At the great book of Sappho's song but no | K |
For should you leave my letter there a boy's | L |
Love lorn indifferent hands might come upon it | M |
And let it fall unnoticed to the floor | N |
pause at the Treatise of parmenides | L |
And hide it there for Caiphs to world's end | O |
Must keep that perfect as they keep her song | P |
So great its fame | Q |
When fitting time has passed | R |
The parchment will disclose to some learned man | S |
A mystery that else had found no chronicler | C |
But the wild Bedouin Though I approve | T |
Those wanderers that welcomed in their tents | L |
What great Harun Al Rashid occupied | U |
With Persian embassy or Grecian war | N |
Must needs neglect I cannot hide the truth | V |
That wandering in a desert featureless | L |
As air under a wing can give birds' wit | M |
In after time they will speak much of me | G |
And speak but fantasy Recall the year | W |
When our beloved Caliph put to death | X |
His Vizir Jaffer for an unknown reason | Y |
'If but the shirt upon my body knew it | M |
I'd tear it off and throw it in the fire ' | Z |
That speech was all that the town knew but he | G |
Seemed for a while to have grown young again | A2 |
Seemed so on purpose muttered Jaffer's friends | L |
That none might know that he was conscience struck | B2 |
But that s a traitor's thought Enough for me | G |
That in the early summer of the year | W |
The mightiest of the princes of the world | C2 |
Came to the least considered of his courtiers | L |
Sat down upon the fountain's marble edge | D2 |
One hand amid the goldfish in the pool | E2 |
And thereupon a colloquy took place | L |
That I commend to all the chroniclers | L |
To show how violent great hearts can lose | L |
Their bitterness and find the honeycomb | F2 |
'I have brought a slender bride into the house | L |
You know the saying ''Change the bride with spring '' | Z |
And she and I being sunk in happiness | L |
Cannot endure to think you tread these paths | L |
When evening stirs the jasmine bough and yet | G2 |
Are brideless ' | Z |
'I am falling into years ' | Z |
'But such as you and I do not seem old | H2 |
Like men who live by habit Every day | J |
I ride with falcon to the river's edge | D2 |
Or carry the ringed mail upon my back | I2 |
Or court a woman neither enemy | G |
Game bird nor woman does the same thing twice | L |
And so a hunter carries in the eye | J2 |
A mimic of youth Can poet's thought | K2 |
That springs from body and in body falls | L |
Like this pure jet now lost amid blue sky | J2 |
Now bathing lily leaf and fish's scale | L2 |
Be mimicry ' | Z |
'What matter if our souls | L |
Are nearer to the surface of the body | G |
Than souls that start no game and turn no rhyme | M2 |
The soul's own youth and not the body's youth | V |
Shows through our lineaments My candle's bright | A |
My lantern is too loyal not to show | K |
That it was made in your great father's reign | I |
And yet the jasmine season warms our blood ' | Z |
'Great prince forgive the freedom of my speech | N2 |
You think that love has seasons and you think | O2 |
That if the spring bear off what the spring gave | P2 |
The heart need suffer no defeat but I | J2 |
Who have accepted the Byzantine faith | Q2 |
That seems unnatural to Arabian minds | L |
Think when I choose a bride I choose for ever | C |
And if her eye should not grow bright for mine | R2 |
Or brighten only for some younger eye | J2 |
My heart could never turn from daily ruin | Y |
Nor find a remedy ' | Z |
'But what if I | J2 |
Have lit upon a woman who so shares | L |
Your thirst for those old crabbed mysteries | L |
So strains to look beyond Our life an eye | J2 |
That never knew that strain would scarce seem bright | A |
And yet herself can seem youth's very fountain | Y |
Being all brimmed with life ' | Z |
'Were it but true | S2 |
I would have found the best that life can give | T2 |
Companionship in those mysterious things | L |
That make a man's soul or a woman's soul | U2 |
Itself and not some other soul ' | Z |
'That love | V2 |
Must needs be in this life and in what follows | L |
Unchanging and at peace and it is right | A |
Every philosopher should praise that love | V2 |
But I being none can praise its opposite | W2 |
It makes my passion stronger but to think | O2 |
Like passion stirs the peacock and his mate | X2 |
The wild stag and the doe that mouth to mouth | Y2 |
Is a man's mockery of the changeless soul ' | Z |
And thereupon his bounty gave what now | Z2 |
Can shake more blossom from autumnal chill | A3 |
Than all my bursting springtime knew A girl | B3 |
Perched in some window of her mother's housc | O2 |
Had watched my daily passage to and fro | K |
Had heard impossible history of my past | R |
Imagined some impossible history | G |
Lived at my side thought time's disfiguring touch | C3 |
Gave but more reason for a woman's care | D3 |
Yet was it love of me or was it love | V2 |
Of the stark mystery that has dazed my sight | A |
perplexed her fantasy and planned her care | D3 |
Or did the torchlight of that mystery | G |
Pick out my features in such light and shade | E3 |
Two contemplating passions chose one theme | F3 |
Through sheer bewilderment She had not paced | G3 |
The garden paths nor counted up the rooms | L |
Before she had spread a book upon her knees | L |
And asked about the pictures or the text | H3 |
And often those first days I saw her stare | D3 |
On old dry writing in a learned tongue | O2 |
On old dry faggots that could never please | L |
The extravagance of spring or move a hand | I3 |
As if that writing or the figured page | J3 |
Were some dear cheek | O2 |
Upon a moonless night | A |
I sat where I could watch her sleeping form | K3 |
And wrote by candle light but her form moved | L3 |
And fearing that my light disturbed her sleep | M3 |
I rose that I might screen it with a cloth | N3 |
I heard her voice 'Turn that I may expound | O3 |
What's bowed your shoulder and made pale your cheek | O2 |
And saw her sitting upright on the bed | P3 |
Or was it she that spoke or some great Djinn | Z2 |
I say that a Djinn spoke A livelong hour | C |
She seemed the learned man and I the child | Q3 |
Truths without father came truths that no book | O2 |
Of all the uncounted books that I have read | P3 |
Nor thought out of her mind or mine begot | K2 |
Self born high born and solitary truths | L |
Those terrible implacable straight lines | L |
Drawn through the wandering vegetative dream | F3 |
Even those truths that when my bones are dust | R3 |
Must drive the Arabian host | S3 |
The voice grew still | A3 |
And she lay down upon her bed and slept | T3 |
But woke at the first gleam of day rose up | U3 |
And swept the house and sang about her work | O2 |
In childish ignorance of all that passed | R |
A dozen nights of natural sleep and then | Z2 |
When the full moon swam to its greatest height | A |
She rose and with her eyes shut fast in sleep | M3 |
Walked through the house Unnoticed and unfelt | A |
I wrapped her in a hooded cloak and she | G |
Half running dropped at the first ridge of the desert | A |
And there marked out those emblems on the sand | A |
That day by day I study and marvel at | A |
With her white finger I led her home asleep | M3 |
And once again she rose and swept the house | L |
In childish ignorance of all that passed | A |
Even to day after some seven years | L |
When maybe thrice in every moon her mouth | Y2 |
Murmured the wisdom of the desert Djinns | L |
She keeps that ignorance nor has she now | Z2 |
That first unnatural interest in my books | L |
It seems enough that I am there and yet | A |
Old fellow student whose most patient ear | V3 |
Heard all the anxiety of my passionate youth | V |
It seems I must buy knowledge with my peace | L |
What if she lose her ignorance and so | L |
Dream that I love her only for the voice | L |
That every gift and every word of praise | L |
Is but a payment for that midnight voice | L |
That is to age what milk is to a child | A |
Were she to lose her love because she had lost | A |
Her confidence in mine or even lose | L |
Its first simplicity love voice and all | W3 |
All my fine feathers would be plucked away | J |
And I left shivering The voice has drawn | Z2 |
A quality of wisdom from her love's | L |
Particular quality The signs and shapes | L |
All those abst | A |
William Butler Yeats
(1)
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