Hassan Bedreddin, clad in rags, ill-shod,
Sought the great temple of the living
God.
The worshippers arose and
drove him forth,
And one in power beat him with a rod.
“Allah,” he cried, “thou
seest what I got;
Thy servants bar me from the sacred spot.”
“Be comforted,”
the Holy One replied;
“It is the only place where I am
not.”
A MORNING FANCY.
I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat
Upon the surface of a shoreless
sea
Whereon no ship nor anything did float,
Save only the frail bark supporting
me;
And that—it was
so shadowy—seemed to be
Almost from out the very vapors wrought
Of the great ocean underneath
its keel;
And all that blue profound appeared as
naught
But thicker sky, translucent
to reveal,
Miles down, whatever through its spaces
glided,
Or at the bottom traveled or abided.
Great cities there I saw—of
rich and poor,
The palace and the hovel;
mountains, vales,
Forest and field, the desert and the moor,
Tombs of the good and wise
who’d lived in jails,
And seas of denser fluid,
white with sails
Pushed at by currents moving here and
there
And sensible to sight above
the flat
Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange
and fair
The nether world that I was
gazing at
With beating heart from that exalted level,
And—lest I founder—trembling
like the devil!
The cities all were populous: men
swarmed
In public places—chattered,
laughed and wept;
And savages their shining bodies warmed
At fires in primal woods.
The wild beast leapt
Upon its prey and slew it
as it slept.
Armies went forth to battle on the plain
So far, far down in that unfathomed
deep
The living seemed as silent as the slain,
Nor even the widows could
be heard to weep.
One might have thought their shaking was
but laughter;
And, truly, most were married shortly
after.
Above the wreckage of that silent fray
Strange fishes swam in circles,
round and round—
Black, double-finned; and once a little
way
A bubble rose and burst without
a sound
And a man tumbled out upon
the ground.
Lord! ’twas an eerie thing to drift
apace
On that pellucid sea, beneath
black skies
And o’er the heads of an undrowning
race;
And when I woke I said—to
her surprise
Who came with chocolate, for me to drink
it:
“The atmosphere is deeper than you
think it.”
