"For her feet were far whiter than manna. Her body was white as the cry Of a child when the chords of hosanna draw the beauty of holiness nigh. The droop of her eyelids would fan a revolt from Baghdad to Lake Tsana, Her fingers were veined alabaster. The sprites of her escort would sigh, "As they bathed her with sun set in amber and cooled in the snow of a cloudlet, And taught her chief eunuch to clamber up moonbeams as fleet as a ghost: These, lavish of reed-pipe and tamburine, slaves of the Son of Daoud, let Her palanquin down into Zeila--gambouge and magenta, the coast!" And the Wazir cried, "Ha!" to the rhymes. "Round the harbour a hoopoe was strutting, for Suleiman's Seal had appointed Him messenger-bird, and he thought: 'If I bring the good news of this beauty, This Sovereign of Silkiness, I shall harvest great thanks and promotion.' So he flew to the Presence and twittered a text on the pleasure of Duty. "'Fulfiller of faint Superstition, whose hand rolls the eyeballs of Thunder, And lightens forked tongues on a mission of menace to bat or to eagle! There comes to your portal a vision whose light shall make Israel wonder. Immortal her beauty and mortal her glance that is soft as a seagull.'" And the Wazir cried, "Hey!" to the rhymes. "But Suleiman, sated with women and governance, lifted his beak From his beard. Naught escaped the magician, not a thought, not a tone. Ah, he knew All! He said: 'I have measured your mind as my pity has measured my people. We shall speak of reward when she comes; I may live to regret it--and you! "'Lo, I am the servant of God, whom I serve as you serve me, not asking For pay by each day or each act, but just for the general sum. The work of the world must be done without wage to be done to our credit. We shall profit in claiming our guerdon not by what we are but become.'