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A bright and varnished vow,
A Speckled Monster, best of boys,
True friend to me, and more
Beloved and a thing of cost,
My doll painted like life; and now
One is broken and two are lost.
_From the Arabic of John Duncan._
MELODIAN
I have been at this shooting-gallery too long.
It is monotonous how the little coloured balls
Make up and down on their silvery water thread;
It would be pleasant to have money and go instead
To watch your greasy audience in the threepenny stalls
Of the World-famous Caravan of Dance and Song.
And I want to go out beyond the turf fires there,
After I've looked at your just smiling face,
To that untented silent dark blue nighted place;
And wait such time as you will wish the noise all dumb
And drop your fairings and leave the funny man, and come ...
You have the most understanding face in all the fair.
_From the Arabic of John Duncan._
THE LOST LADY
You are the drowned,
Star that I found
Washed on the rim of the sea
Before the morning.
You are the little dying light
That stopped me in the night.
_From the Arabic of John Duncan._
LOVE BROWN AND BITTER
You know so well how to stay me with vapours
Distilled expertly to that unworthy end;
You know the poses of your body I love best
And that I am cheerful with your head on my breast,
You know you please me by disliking one friend;
You read up what amuses me in the papers.
Who knows me knows I am not of those fools
That gets tired of a woman who is kind to them,
Yet you know not how stifled you render me
By learning me so well, how I long to see
An unpractised girl under your clever phlegm,
A soul not so letter-perfect in the rules.
_From the Arabic of John Duncan._
OKHOUAN
A mole shows black
Between her mouth and cheek.
As if a negro,
Coming into a garden,
Wavered between a purple rose
And a scarlet camomile.
_From the Arabic._
LYING DOWN ALONE
I shall never see your tired sleep
In the bed that you make beautiful,
Nor hardly ever be a dream
That plays by your dark hair;
Yet I think I know your turning sigh
And your trusting arm's abandonment,
For they are the picture of my night,
My night that does not end.
_From the Arabic of John Duncan._
OLD GREEK LOVERS
They put wild olive and acanthus up
With tufts of yellow wool above the door
When a man died in Greece and in Greek Islands,
Grey stone by the blue sea,
Or sage-green trees down to the water's edge.
How many clanging years ago
I, also withering into death, sat with him,
Old man of so white hair who only,
Only looked past me into the red fire.
At last his words were all a jumble of plum-trees
And white boys smelling of the sea's green wine
And practice of his lyre. Suddenly
The bleak resurgent mind
Called wonderfully clear: "What mark have I left?"
Crying girls with wine and linen
Washed the straight old body and wrapped up,
And set the doorward feet.
Later for me also under Greek sun
The pendant leaves in green and bitter flakes
Blew out to join the wastage of the world,
And wool, I take it, in the nests of birds.
_From the Arabic of John Duncan._
NIGHT AND MORNING
The great brightness of the burning of the stars,
Little frightened love,
Is like your eyes,
When in the heavy dusk
You question the dark blue shadows,
Fearing an evil.
Below the night
The one clear line of dawn;
As it were your head
Where there is one golden hair
Though your hair is very brown.
_From the Arabic (School of Ebn-el-Moattaz) (ninth century)._
IN A YELLOW FRAME
Her hand tinted to gold with henna
Gave me a cup of wine like gold water,
And I said: The moon rise, the sun rise.
_From the Arabic of Hefny-bey-Nassif (contemporary)._
BECAUSE THE GOOD ARE NEVER FAIR
When she appears the daylight envies her garment,
The wanton daylight envies her garment
To show it to the jealous sun.
And when she walks,
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