"The King made reply. He was sadder than rain in the willows of Jordan. 'We are God's passing thoughts. They alone that await their fulfilment are wise. You shall be for a warning, O hoopoe. I had given you more than gold-wages If you had believed we not only had ears, I and Allah, but eyes! "'Yet giving is fraught with forgiveness. Now therefore the crown you did covet Is gone. You are healed of your pride; you shall live till the Angel of Death errs From Allah's command. By my Ring-of-most-Magic the gold is transmuted. Go forth! He has set for a sign on your brow a tiara of feathers.' "So the hoopoe went forth in the glory of plumes that he won in this wise And wears. Then the hunters, assembled from the uttermost quarters of Sham, should Have shot, but did not, for they said: 'What a head! We will not waste an arrow On sport of this sort. We are sold! We were told it was gold and....'" Tamam Shud And the Wazir shrieked "Halt!" at the rhymes. But as he slept that night the Dreamer prayed That understanding might bedew his head. And so it was. The fountain of the Dawn Rose in the whiteness of the month _Rajab_, Washing the desert stones, and made each body Shine as the sun-swift chariot of a soul. While the last swimmer in the sea of slumber, Out of the deep, its jungled bottom, its ghosts, Its weight and wonders, rises to the surface In final breaths of sleep, the Wazir stirred And flung out joyful arms. Not otherwise The groping diver in the Gulf of Pearls, Having achieved adventure, comes to light And grasps the painted gunwale--with his prize. "For every hour and day Of youth that spelled delay In finding you, I pray To life for pardon, I that long since have faced My task in patient haste: Out of my former waste To make your garden. "With these soiled hands I made My Self (man's hardest trade). The sun was _you_: the shade My toil, my seed did. I drove my strong soul through Years in the thought of you, For whom my garden grew, And grew unheeded;