And then there came a varlet-- Loud laughed he in his face: "Thus do I spit upon thee, Thee and thy curséd race!" Within the silent chamber The Norman knight lay dead-- Nor Norman knight nor Saxon serf Heard aught the dead man said. THE KHALIF AND THE ARAB Among the tales, wherein it hath been told, In golden letters in a book of gold, Of Hatim Tai's hospitality, Who, substanceless and dead and shadowy, Made men his guests upon a mountain top Whereon his tomb grayed from a thistle crop;-- A tomb of rock where women, hewn of stone, Rude figures, spread dishevelled hair, whose moan From dark to daybreak made the silence sigh, At which the camel-drivers, tented nigh, "Ghouls or hyenas" shuddering would say, But only granite women find at day:-- Among such tales--who questions of their truth?-- One tale still haunts me from my earliest youth; Of that lost city, Sheddad son of Aad Built 'mid the Sebaa sands,--a king who had Dominion over many lands and kings,-- That city, built in pride and pow'r, of things Unstable of the earth. For he had read Of Paradise and to himself had said, "Now in this life the like of Paradise I'll build me and the Prophet's may despise, Having no need of that he promises." So for this city taxed the lands and seas, And columned Irem, on a blinding height, Blazed in the desert like a chrysolite; The manner of its building, it is told, Alternate bricks of silver and of gold. But Sheddad with his women and his slaves, His thousand viziers, armored troops, as waves Of ocean countless, God with awful flame-- Shot sheer in thunder on him--overcame, Confounded, and abolished; (ere his eyes Had glimpsed bright follies of that paradise) And blotted to a wilderness the land Wherein accursed it lies and lost in sand.-- Sad tales and glad; and 'mid them one, in sooth, That is recorded of an Arab youth. The Khalif Hisham ben Abdulmelik, Hunting one day, through some unusual freak Rode, parted from his retinue, and gave Chase to an antelope. Without a slave, Vizier or amir to a pasture place Of sheep he came, where dark, in tattered grace, Watched one, an Arab youth. And as it came The antelope drew off, with words of flame, On fire with rage, unto the youth he turned, Shouting, "Thou slave! ho, hast thou not discerned The antelope escapes me? Up, dog, run! Head him back this way!"