"Tits that swing upon a thistle, Wrens and chats that pipe and whistle, Join their notes to our epistle, Where the bee-fraught lime Orchestrates the lark's espousal Not of causes but carousal: Owl, we hear you charge the ouzel With a waste of time! "Princeling, a fantastic prophet Tweaks your robe and bids you doff it, Offers you escape from Tophet On the wings of words. Spread them bravely, fly the town, sell All you have for this one counsel: Sing and never mind the groundsel! Come, we too are birds." Thereat the conclave fluttered and flew out, And I have heard them on the Persian roads, In half-dead cities. History repeats Nothing except the rose. But Persians say This was the last they heard of government. XV THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH Alas! 'Twas time to go--"Conceal the wine, The purple and the yellow infidel!"-- Rice cooked in saffron, honey-cakes, and _mast_ With many-coloured _shirini_ were all Packed up in paunches capon-lined.... The Queen Sailed through the city, mounted high on Tous, Full in the moonlight, purer than the moon, Whose beauty, being weighed with hers, the scale Sent up to heaven and left the Queen on earth.... Followed quick tumbles to the lambent street, Graspings of shoes, and search for garments lost, With tunes that mounted all awry as flame Draught-blown, short breaths and straggling feet. The Dreamer Reddened and drooped his head; for at the Gate Sat a portentous Sheikh, thrice great in girth, Ali-el-Kerbelaï, Known-of-Men, To whom--he slept all day--his nightly school Resorted in the porch. He saw, and shrugged His shoulders, rounded in glory like the hills That drift and clash about the Gulf of Pearls-- Bahreinis tell the tale lest rival _dhows_ Should venture into trade--and thus held forth: "Gossips, I have watched fools wander through this gate In generations. Never have I seen Men so bewitched by one closed palanquin, So little fain to chatter with the great, So blind, or single-eyed, they did not see Ali-el-Kerbelaï, even me. "Poor souls! Dusk swamps our wriggling thoroughfares Like trenches; and I rub my hands to think How I to-night in coolth shall sleep and drink, While sunrise takes these vagrants unawares. Madmen set out each day to beard the sun, And seventy years ago Your Slave was one. "When all the world was young, that is when _I_ Was young, I promised Allah to be wise, And started on the road of enterprise That leads towards the snow-capped hills of Why, Passing my hand across my shaven brow Heavy with all the lower lore of How."