We watch the Judge coming down the Mount of Olives in the midst of a
jubilant throng all involved in a noise of timbrels and instruments of
music: for his life was simple and one with the life of his people.
It is evening, all the west yonder a bewitched Kingdom charm-embathed,
wherein a barge of Venus bethronged with loves and roses voyages on a
sea of dalliance en route for the last Beatific--the last, the seventh,
Heaven--whitherward gads all a pilgrim-swarm of enraptured spirits, all,
all thitherward, Paul caught up with clothes aflaunt, and soaring
eagle, Enoch transfigured, green hippogriff, hop of squatted frog;
and thitherward trots with blinkings, bleating, the Ram of the Golden
Fleece, the flagrant flamingos flap and go.
The Judge, hoary-headed now, in a robe of cloth-of-silver which rippled,
had but now got home from a Pilgrimage; and the time was Simcath Torah,
the Rejoicing of the Law, and the carrying of Candles, in the month.
Tishri: silver his robe and silver his hair that hung round a brown and
puckered skin, but silvery, too, his every tooth still, and his vigour
good; and, as down the Mount of Olives he stepped, he saw Mount Sion and
that Temple that he had piled, across whose roughened frontispiece of
gold glowed in a bow, bold like the rainbow's, in characters of blazing
sapphire and chrysoprase, that inscription:
“Y'HOVAH B'KOKMAR YSAD ARETS, CONEN SHAMAIM B'THBUNAH”
and, as he saw it, lo, buoyancy caught the old man's feet: for the
cymballing and music had grown very fiercely hot, so that all the
congregation reeled in dance; and as the lasso drops round the
astonished prairie-horse and draws asprawl, so dancing caught and drew
his foot, and he danced.
And his wife Rebecca, mother of many sons, prying from a window-lattice,
writhed odd the eyebrows of the cynic, one beyond the other: for not
with foot alone he danced, but his wrung belly laboured in that travail
of Orient dancing; and she turned and smiled to Margaret Loveday
a turned-down smile, implying shrug, implying girding, her eyelids
lowered, yet indulgent of his nature's rage.
And not with foot and abdomen alone he danced, but his two balancing
palms danced to the beat of the heat of the music's heart; and with heel
and toe he danced. And as he danced, he sang, all apant, filling up
with nonsense-sounds when the rhythm's imperative tramp outran his
improvisation; and singing he danced, and dancing sang: with abdomen and
arms he danced, and with toe and heel he danced.
And dancing he sang:
My hands,
be dancing to God,
your Guide,
And peal my pipes,
and riot my feet,
and writhe to His Heat,
my tripes.
So fair!
With Rum-te-te-Tum
te Tum,
And Rum and Tum,
and Rum-te-te-Tum,
and Rum-te-te-Tum,
te Tum.
So fair!
This freehold for seraphs free!
That flame! those skies!
and Blest is Her Name,
and blest are my eyes,
that see.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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