The while they led me forth unheeding, till we came Unto a chamber lit with one slow-burning flame That yellow horn bedims, and laid me down, and there They soothed my bruised limbs, and combed my tangled hair, And salved my limbs with rarely-mingled unguents pressed By hands of holy ones who dream beneath the suns Of Araby the Blest, and so, when they had bathed My burning eyes with milk of dreamy anodyne And cool’d my throat with wine, In robings of cool silk my broken body they swathed, Sandals of gold they placed upon my feet, and round My sad sun-blistered brows a silver fillet bound-- Decking me with the pride of a bridegroom that goes To the joy of his bride and is lovely in her eyes-- And led me to her side. Then, as a conquering prince, I, who long since had been battered and tost Like a dead leaf or ghost buffeted by wild storms, Came to her white arms, conquering, and was lost, Yet dared not gaze upon the beauty that I dreamed. So, in my trance, it seemed that a shadowy soft dance Coiled slowly and unwound, swayed, beckoned, and recovered As hooded cobra bound by hollow spells of sound Unto the piper sways; so silently they hovered I only heard the beat of their naked feet, And then, another sound.... A dull throb thrumming, a noise of faint drumming, Threatening, coming nearer, piercing deeper Than a dream lost in the heart of a sleeper Into those deeps where the dark fire gloweth, The secret flame that every man knoweth, Embers that smoulder, fires that none can fan, Terrible, older than the mind of man.... Before he crawled from his swamp and spurned The life of the beast that dark fire burned In the hidden deeps where no dream can come: Only the throbbing of a drum Can wake it from its smouldering-- Sightless, soundless, senseless, dumb-- Dumb as those blind seeds that lie Drown’d in mud, and shuddering, I knew that I was man no more, But a throbbing core of flesh, that knew Nor beauty, nor truth, nor anything But the black sky and the slimy earth: Roots of trees, and fear, and pain, The blank of death, the pangs of birth, An inhuman thing possess’d By the throbbing of a drum: And my lips were strange and numb, But they kissed her white breast.... Then, being drunk with pride and splendour of love, I cried: ’"O spring of all delight, O moonèd mystery, O living marvel, white as the dead queen of night, O flower, and O flame ... tell me at least thy name That, from this desolate height, I may proclaim its wonder To the lost lands hereunder before thy beauty dies As fades the fire of dawn upon a peak of snow!"’ Then: "Look," she sighed, "into my eyes, and thou shalt know." So, with her fingers frail, she pressed my brows, and so, Slowly, at last, she raised my drooping eyelids pale, And in her eyes I gazed. ’Then fear, than love more blind, Caught at my heart and fast in chains of horror bound-- As one who in profound and midnight forest ways Sees in the dark the burning eyes of a tiger barred