Light was not. All was still. The caravan Had ceased its song and motion by the bed Wherein the hill-stream tosses sleeplessly, The only sound, save one staccato note Interminably piped by tiny owls. The camp lay balmed in slumber, as the dead Are straitened in white trappings. Then a voice, Deeper than any dead black mountain pool Or blacker well where devils cool by day, Seemed to commune with Dreamer-of-the-Age, Who, peering through the cloak about his head, Challenged: "Who speaks?" The voice replied: "A friend Unknown to you." ... It was old Peacock Tous, The great grey camel with the crimson tail On whom the queen was wont to ride. He said: "Sheikh, I was born among the Bakhtiari, The shelter of their hawthorn vales was mine; For me, unbroken to the loads men carry, The breeze that crowns their uplands glowed as wine To drink. I, Tous, the Peacock, whom men call so Because I ever moved as one above The common herd, was mad and merry. Also I knew not yet the prickled herb of Love. "Spring tricked the desert out with flowered patterns For me to tread like flowered carpets wrought In patience by my master's painted slatterns-- He said that only Persian _women_ fought. Ah, youth is free and silken-haired and leggy! No camel knows why Allah makes it end, But He is wiser. Me the tribe's Il-Beggi Spied out and sent as tribute to a friend, "A dweller in black tents, a nomad chieftain Of Khamseh Arabs or unruled Kashgai, Whose cattle-raids and rapines past belief stain The furthest page of camel-history. And shamefully the ragged sutlers thwacked us, Until I learned, as to this manner born, That pride must find a mother in the cactus And hope the milk of kindness in the thorn. "O Sheikh, I found. A milk-white _nakeh_ followed The drove of males, and I would lag behind With her, no matter how the drivers holloa'ed-- Man never doubts that all but he are blind. At nightfall, when our champing echoed surly Beyond the cheerful circle of the fire, Something within me whispered, and thus early I bore the burden of the world's desire. "But I was saddled with the will of Allah, Since one there was more fleet of foot than I, The chosen of the chief of the Mehallah, Whose nostrils quivered as he passed me by. To her, beside his paces and his frothing, My steadfastness was common as the air, My passion and my patience were as nothing, Because fate chose to make my rival fair.